Delving into Impossible Storyworlds of Terror: The Unnaturalness of Hassan Blasim’s Short Narrative Fiction

Shang Biwu

doi:10.1515/arcadia-2017-0010

Article

Delving into Impossible Storyworlds of Terror: The Unnaturalness of Hassan Blasim’s Short Narrative Fiction

Shang Biwu

Published/Copyright: June 20, 2017

Published by

Become an author with De Gruyter Brill

Author Information Explore this Subject

From the journal arcadia Volume 52 Issue 1

Abstract

Many of Hassan Blasim’s short stories fall into a broad category of unnatural narrative. In line with the most recent scholarship on unnatural narratology, this article first discusses the unnatural worldmaking strategies adopted by Blasim that include dead narrators, conflicting events, and ontological metalepsis. Second, it analyzes a set of unnatural acts closely related to the characters’ death and their consequential corporeal impairments. Third, it examines the mentality of Blasim’s characters by focusing on a particular type of unnatural mind – the paranoid mind, which in radical cases involves two conflicting minds simultaneously emerging in one character. By resorting to unnatural narratives, Blasim makes his short stories anti-mimetically impossible but nightmarishly real, which not only generates effects of defamiliarity and horror but also forces us to ponder over what is now happening in the seemingly remote parts of the world and to raise our common concerns for human suffering.

Keywords: Hassan Blasim; impossible storyworlds; unnatural narrative; unnatural acts; unnatural minds

Works Cited

Abbott, H. Porter. “Unreadable Minds and the Captive Reader.” Style 42.4 (2008): 448–70.Search in Google Scholar

Alber, Jan. “Unnatural Narratology: The Systematic Study of Anti-mimeticism.” Literature Compass 10.5 (2013): 449–60.10.1111/lic3.12065Search in Google Scholar

Alber, Jan. “Unnatural Narrative.” Handbook of Narratology. 2^nd ed. Eds. Peter Hühn et al. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014. 887–95. 10.1515/9783110316469.887Search in Google Scholar

Alber, Jan. Unnatural Narrative: Impossible Worlds in Fiction and Drama. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2016.10.2307/j.ctt1d4v147Search in Google Scholar

Alber, Jan, Henrik Skov Nielsen, and Brian Richardson, eds. A Poetics of Unnatural Narrative. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 2013.Search in Google Scholar

Alber, Jan, and Rüdiger Heinze, eds. Unnatural Narratives, Unnatural Narratology. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2011.10.1515/9783110229042Search in Google Scholar

Ashfeldt, Lane. “Literary Defiance: An Interview with Hassan Blasim.” World Literature Today 89.1 (2015): 10–2.10.1353/wlt.2015.0229Search in Google Scholar

Blasim, Hassan. The Corpus Exhibition and Other Stories of Iraq. Trans. Jonathan Wright. London: Penguin Books, 2013, therein:“An Army Newspaper.” 37–47. “The Corpse Exhibition .” 1–10. “Crosswords.” 49–66. “The Green Zone Rabbit.” 25–36. “The Hole.” 67–77. “The Iraqi Christ.” 91–101. “The Nightmares of Carlos Fuentes.” 185–96. “The Reality and the Record .” 155–70. “A Thousand and One Knives.” 103–26.Search in Google Scholar

Blasim, Hassan. “The Truck to Berlin.” The Madman of the Freedom Square. Trans. Jonathan Wright. Manchester: Comma Press, 2008. 69–75.Search in Google Scholar

Blasim, Hassan. “The Virgin and the Soldier.” The Madman of the Freedom Square. Trans. Jonathan Wright. Manchester: Comma Press, 2008. 27–36.Search in Google Scholar

Blasim, Hassan. “A Wolf.” The Iraqi Christ. Trans. Jonathan Wright. Manchester: Comma Press, 2013. 45–53.Search in Google Scholar

Boxall, Peter. The Value of the Novel. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2015.10.1017/CBO9781107414976Search in Google Scholar

Cromby, John, and David J. Harper. “Paranoia: A social Account.” Theory & Psychology 19.3 (2009): 335–61.10.1177/0959354309104158Search in Google Scholar

Fassler, Joe. “Q & A: Hassan Blasim.” 2014, bit.ly/2mGmQk3. Accessed 20 Feb. 2017.Search in Google Scholar

Ghazoul, Ferial J. “Iraqi Short Fiction: The Unhomely at Home and Abroad.” Journal of Arabic Literature 35.1 (2004): 1–24.10.1163/1570064041341888Search in Google Scholar

Ghazoul, Ferial J. “Literature and the Arts in Contemporary Iraqi Culture.” International Journal of Contemporary Iraqi Studies 3.3 (2009): 233–6.10.1386/ijcis.3.3.233/2Search in Google Scholar

Herman, David. Basic Elements of Narrative. Oxford: Blackwell, 2009.10.1002/9781444305920Search in Google Scholar

Iversen, Stefan. “Unnatural Minds.” A Poetics of Unnatural Narrative. Eds. Jan Alber, Henrik Skov Nielsen, and Brian Richardson. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 2013. 94–112.Search in Google Scholar

O’Donnell, Patrick. “Engendering Paranoia in Contemporary Narrative.” Boundary 2 19.1 (1992):181–204.10.2307/303455Search in Google Scholar

Palmer, Alan. Social Minds in the Novel. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 2010.Search in Google Scholar

Richardson, Brian. Unnatural Narrative: Theory, History, and Practice. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 2015.Search in Google Scholar

Shang, Biwu. “Unnatural Narratology: Core Issues and Critical Debates.” Journal of Literary Semantics 44.2 (2015): 169–94.10.1515/jls-2015-0007Search in Google Scholar

Sklar, Howard. The Art of Sympathy in Fiction: Forms of Ethical and Emotional Persuasion. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2013.10.1075/lal.15Search in Google Scholar

“Terrorist incidents in Iraq in 2014.” Wikipedia, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorist_incidents_in_Iraq_in_2014. Accessed 20 Feb. 2017.Search in Google Scholar

Yassin-Kassab, Robin. “Beirut 39: New Writing from the Arab World, edited by Samuel Shimon.” The Guardian, 11. June 2010.Search in Google Scholar

Published Online: 2017-06-20

Published in Print: 2017-05-24

You are currently not able to access this content.

Articles in the same Issue

https://doi.org/10.1515/arcadia-2017-0010

Keywords for this article

Hassan Blasim; impossible storyworlds; unnatural narrative; unnatural acts; unnatural minds