Iraq +100

Iraq + 100 poses a question to ten Iraqi writers: what might your country look like in the year 2103 – a century after the disastrous American- and British-led invasion, and 87 years down the line from its current, nightmarish battle for survival? How might the effects of that one intervention reach across a century of repercussions, and shape the lives of ordinary Iraqi citizens, or influence its economy, culture, or politics? Might Iraq have finally escaped the cycle of invasion and violence triggered by 2003 and, if so, what would a new, free Iraq look like? Covering a range of approaches – from science fiction, to allegory, to magic realism – these stories use the blank canvas of the future to explore the nation’s hopes and fears in equal measure. Along the way a new aesthetic for the ‘Iraqi fantastical’ begins to emerge: thus we meet time-travelling angels, technophobic dictators, talking statues, macabre museum-worlds, even hovering tiger-droids, and all the time buoyed by a dark, inventive humour that, in itself, offers hope.


Translated by Jonathan Wright, Elisabeth Jaquette, Andrew Leber, Katharine Halls, Emre Bennett, Adam Talib, and Max Weiss.


With support from The British Institute for the Study of Iraq and English PEN.


One of NPR's Great Reads of 2017 (US Edition)


One of The Guardian's Best SF and Fantasy Books of the Year 2016


One of Tor.com's Reviewers' Choice: Best Books of 2016 - "...the ways in which certain writers turn aggression, invasion, and resistance on their heads will leave you questioning some of your core assumptions about the world beyond our borders."


One of World Literature Today's 75 Notable Translations of 2016


One of Barnes&Noble's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Collections and Anthologies of 2016 - "One of the year’s most important speculative anthologies is also a venue for voices that most Westerners have likely never encountered before."


'Compelling, mind-expanding fiction.' - Guy Gunaratne, author of In Our Mad and Furious City (longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2018)