All the children in the world, when they go to school, have the right to study in their mother tongue. But we go to school and run into literary Arabic as children. It sounds like a foreign language. The words… — Hassan Blasim Copy Share Image
I still write in literary Arabic but I try to rid it of the rhetoric, the symbolism, and the stuff that ordinary people don't understand. — Hassan Blasim Copy Share Image
I'm not much interested in prizes, whether from the Arab world or from the Western world. Writing is a very difficult process and I… — Hassan Blasim Copy Share
We used to watch executions. I mentioned that in one of my stories. There was a piece of open ground near the area where… — Hassan Blasim Copy Share
It's ridiculous and painful to use the Arabic of an Iraqi poet who lived centuries ago to describe what we in Iraq are suffering… — Hassan Blasim Copy Share
The trail of "secret migration" was a shock to me. I knew a little about the difficulties, just bits of news in the media. — Hassan Blasim Copy Share
How can one talk in a classical language about a child who's torn apart in an explosion in the market near his school? People… — Hassan Blasim Copy Share
“...I believe in dreams more than I believe in God. Dreams get into you and leave, then come back with new fruit, but God… — Hassan Blasim Copy Share
I'm talking about the essence of humanity. Hope is mixed into the blood of every human being, everywhere and in every time. — Hassan Blasim Copy Share
“On more than one occasion I heard how life apparently advances, moves on, sets sail or, at worst, apparently crawls slowly forward. My life,… — Hassan Blasim Copy Share
“The pleasure I found in reading books was disconcerting...I felt anxious about every new piece of information. I would latch onto one particular detail… — Hassan Blasim Copy Share
The Iran-Iraq war began the same year that I went to primary school, at the age of six. — Hassan Blasim Copy Share
Some Iraqi writers are more daring today and have excellent imaginations and their material is rich in human experience. But the Arab prizes, once… — Hassan Blasim Copy Share
"Secret migration" across borders is a form of human degradation and evidence of the depravity of the human conscience. — Hassan Blasim Copy Share
“The operation would be in a week...I didn't know if I would survive. How I longed to go back to reading! There was nowhere… — Hassan Blasim Copy Share
“I wanted to reach back to other times I might have lived in, the traces of which are scattered to places I previously thought… — Hassan Blasim Copy Share
I didn't start publishing literary texts until I had left Iraq. At the Academy [of Cinematic Arts] I was busy with short films. — Hassan Blasim Copy Share
