‘In the land of language’: An interview with Hassan Blasim

In this interview, which focuses on the collection of short stories Sololand (Comma Press, 2025), the Iraqi author Hassan Blasim engages us with the big questions of history and refugee-life, language and the role of the writer, and of course humour. Blasim’s characters all find themselves in impossible positions. We follow characters such as the ISIS cook working undercover to retrieve ancient manuscripts from a desecrated site, and the refugee in Scandinavia unable to process the trauma of exile. The stories are equally heart-breaking and funny.