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The Corpse Exhibition: And Other Stories Of Iraq (2014)

by Hassan Blasim(Favorite Author)

3.91 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

0143123262 (ISBN13: 9780143123262)

languge

English

genre

Historical Fiction

publisher

Penguin Books

review 1: Knew nothing about this book going into it. It was pretty dark and occasionally humorous but I found it to be pretty interesting, especially after finding out it was written about the Iraq War from an Iraqi perspective. My only complaint about this book is that, at times, it gets a bit hard to follow or understand what is going on, especially when things are talked about out-of-order or the perspective is changing between paragraphs and is indicated only by italic text. Other than that, the somewhat puzzling or cryptic sections do a good job of making you want to pay attention to try to figure out what is going on, forcing you to pay attention to the story.
review 2: A more accurate rating would be 3.5 stars because there were some stories that I really liked, ... morebut then some that didn't do much for me - especially those towards the end. The opening title story is possibly the most haunting of them all, shocking but at the same time something you could see happening. "An Army Newspaper" is very surreal, but it was one of the most captivating and I wouldn't have minded reading an expanded version of it with bits of the books mentioned in it written out. "The Reality and the Record" is a fine example of how easy it is to twist the truth and of what the war does to the human mind. Overall this is a strong collection of short stories, going from somewhat disgusting and haunting to hallucinatory and delightful in a way. Reminded me of Gogol and Bulgakov and how you couldn't be quite sure what was real and what wasn't. Listening to Vatican Shadow while reading created an interesting atmosphere and this book may have won me over, I haven't liked short stories much before. less

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