Hassan Blasim

Hassan Blasim

Hassan Blasim (born 1973) is an Iraqi-born film director and writer who lives in Finland. He writes in Arabic.

Blasim went to Finland as a refugee in 2004 after getting in trouble when making the film The Wounded Camera in the Kurdish area in northern Iraq. He made four short films for the Finnish broadcasting company Yle. His short story collection The Madman of Freedom Square was long-listed for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 2010.^[1] His book The Iraqi Christ, translated from Arabic to English by Jonathan Wright, and published by Comma Press in 2013. A selection of his stories was published as The Corpse Exhibition by Penguin US in 2014. It won a number of awards including one of four winners in the English Pen's Writers in Translation Programme Awards.^[2] In 2014, he became the first ever Arabic writer to win the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize for The Iraqi Christ.^[3][4]

Filmography

• The Wounded Camera
• Uneton, 2006^[5]
• Luottamuksen arvoinen, 2007
• Elämä nopea kuin nauru, 2007
• Juuret, 2008

Books

• Short Films (2005) collection of articles in: Cinema Booklets: Series of Publications for the Emirates Film Competition. Ed. S. Sarmini. Abu Dhabi: Emirates Cultural Foundation.
• Poetic Cinema (2006) collection of articles. Ed. Salah Sarmini, in: Cinema Booklets: Series of Publications for the Emirates Film Competition. Abu Dhabi: Emirates Cultural Foundation
• Diving into Existing (2007) correspondence and dairies in collaboration with Adnan al-Mubarak.
• Wounded Camera (2007) Writings on cinema.
• The Shia’s Poisoned Child (2008) story collection.
• Madman of Freedom Square (2009) Comma Press, translated from the Arabic by Jonathan Wright
• The Iraqi Christ (2013) Comma Press, short stories, translated from the Arabic by Jonathan Wright
• The Corpse Exhibition (2014) Penguin US, short stories, translated from the Arabic by Jonathan Wright

References

1. Boyd Tonkin (12 March 2010). "Reading all over the world: The long-list for this year's Independent Foreign Fiction Prize spans the globe". The Independent. Archived from the original on 12 March 2010. Retrieved March 7, 2014.
2. Emma Cleave (April 13, 2012). "English PEN Announces the Winners of its Writers in Translation Programme Awards 2012". English PEN. Retrieved May 23, 2014.
3. Boyd Tonkin (23 May 2014). "Iraq's 'Irvine Welsh' wins the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize for The Iraqi Christ". The Independent. Retrieved May 23, 2014.
4. Alison Flood (8 April 2014). "Knausgaard heads Independent foreign fiction prize shortlist". The Guardian. Retrieved April 10, 2014.
5. Yle, Basaari (Finnish)

External links

• Hassam Blasim's blog
• Madman of Freedom Square by Marianne Brace, The Independent
• Interview in Kumppani (Finnish)