Hassan Blasim

Hassan Blasim is a writer and film creator born in Baghdad in 1973. He studied at the city’s Academy of Cinematic Arts where he won awards for writing and directing the movies Gardenia and White Clay. He was arrested multiple times for his movies which is why he moves to Iraqi Kurdistan and is able to escape through migrant smuggling channels to Finland, where he lives today. He writes stories, novels and theater pieces, and is also a creator of plenty of short movies and television documentaries. Due to his subject matter, and first and foremost, his highly critical spirit, his works have not been published in Arab countries, except the heavily censored The Madman of Freedom Square. A Serbian publishing house Geopoetika published his novels Bulbul and His Boss in 2021 and Sololand in 2023. Blasim’s works have been translated into more than twenty languages. He has been awarded with a few International Awards among the most important being the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize that he received in 2014 for his book The Iraqi Christ.