Iraq + 100
SynopsisPlot
Iraq + 100 poses a question to Iraqi writers (those who still live in that nation, and those who have joined the worldwide diaspora): What might your home country look like in the year 2103, a century after a disastrous foreign invasion? Using science fiction, allegory, and magical realism to challenge the perception of what it means to be “The Other”, this groundbreaking anthology edited by Hassan Blasim contains stories that are heartbreakingly surreal, and yet utterly recognizable to the human experience. Though born out of exhaustion, fear, and despair, these stories are also fueled by themes of love, family, and endurance, and woven through with a delicate thread of hope for the future.
Story
About this book
Iraq + 100 is an anthology of speculative fiction edited by Hassan Blasim. It gathers stories by Iraqi writers, some still living in Iraq and others scattered across the global diaspora, and asks each of them to imagine what the country might look like in the year 2103. That date is deliberate: it falls exactly one century after the 2003 invasion that reshaped Iraqi society, infrastructure, and daily life.
The contributors work across science fiction, allegory, and magical realism, building futures for cities and landscapes that have already been transformed by conflict. Some stories picture technological change; others explore shifts in memory, language, or social order. Running through many of them are concerns about family, displacement, and what survives when a culture is forced to rebuild from loss. The collection does not treat Iraq as a single idea but as a place with varied communities and competing visions of what comes next.
Blasim, an Iraqi-born writer and filmmaker who has lived in Finland, shaped the anthology around voices that rarely appear in English-language speculative fiction. The result is a set of futures rooted in specific geography and recent history rather than in generic dystopian conventions.
