Читать книгу The Nightmares of Carlos Fuentes - Hassan Blasim - Страница 6

HASSAN BLASIM (Writer of the original story)

Is a poet, filmmaker and short story writer. Born in Baghdad in 1973, he studied at the city’s Academy of Cinematic Arts, where two of his films ‘Gardenia’ (screenplay & director) and ‘White Clay’ (screenplay) won the Academy’s Festival Award for Best Work in their respective years. In 1998 he left Baghdad for Sulaymaniya (Iraqi Kurdistan), where he continued to make films, including the feature-length drama Wounded Camera, under the pseudonym Ouazad Osman, fearing for his family back in Baghdad under the Hussein dictatorship. In 2004, he moved to Finland, where he has since made numerous short films and documentaries for Finnish television.

His stories have previously been published on www.iraqstory.com and his essays on cinema have featured in Cinema Booklets (Emirates Cultural Foundation). After first appearing in English in Madinah, his debut collection The Madman of Freedom Square was published by Comma a year later (Nov 2009). Madman was long-listed for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 2010, and has since been translated into numerous other languages. A heavily censored Arabic edition was finally published in 2012 and was immediately banned in Jordan. In 2010, Hassan was described by The Guardian newspaper as ‘perhaps the greatest writer of Arabic fiction alive’. His second collection, The Iraqi Christ was published in April 2013, and subsequently translated and published in Finland at the end of 2013. A selection of stories from both of his two collections were published in the States in Feb 2014, by Penguin USA, under the title ‘The Corpse Exhibition’. In May 2014, The Iraqi Christ was announced the winner of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize – the first Arabic title ever to win the award and the first short story collection ever to win the award.

RASHID RAZAQ (Playwright)

Rashid’s debut play The President and The Pakistani (directed by Tom Attenborough), based on the real-life story of Barack Obama and his illegal immigrant flat-mate opened at the Waterloo East Theatre in run-up to the US presidential election in 2012. Rashid’s short play Arab Spring (starring Nabil Elouahabi) was performed at the Nursery Festival in 2011 and was featured on BBC Arabic Service. His short play, Hardcore, was selected for a best of programme at the 503 Theatre. He is a graduate of the Royal Court Theatre’s Young Writers’ Programme.

Rashid wrote Man and Boy (starring Eddie Marsan), which won Best Short at the Tribeca Film Festival 2011 and a top prize at the Aspen Film Festival. His previous short film Father (starring Sam Spruell and Matt King) was selected for festivals in the UK and internationally. He has co-written the forthcoming feature film Orthodox (starring Stephen Graham) about an Orthodox Jewish boxer and has another feature film in development.

Rashid works as a reporter for the London Evening Standard covering subjects including crime, arts and politics, and is a screenwriter as well as a journalist.