Hassan Blasim

(1973, Baghdad) was named "perhaps the greatest living writer of Arabic fiction" by The Guardian in 2010. Both his debut, The Madman of Freedom Square, as well the 2014 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize winner The Iraqi Christ comprise stories of war, migration and refugee trauma. Due to his taboo-busting writing style he has also been called the James Joyce of Arabic literature. For a long time his work was only available digitally and was immediately banned upon publication in Jordan. In 2004, Blasim landed in Finland after years of drifting around as a refugee; he'd ended up in difficulties in Saddam Hussein's Iraq after shooting the film The Wounded Camera in the Kurdish north of the country. His work has been or is being translated into 20 languages. In March 2016 his first play premiered in a Helsinki theatre. The first Dutch translation of his work, the collection Lijkententoonstelling will appear during the festival.