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A review by samhouston
Baghdad Noir by Samuel Shimon, Layla Qasrany, Roy Scranton, Sinan Antoon, Muhsin Al-Ramli, Hussain Al-Mozany, محسن الرملي, Ali Bader, Hadia Said, Ahmed Saadawi, Mohammed Alwan Jabr, Salar Abdoh, Salima Salih, Hayet Raies, Dheya al-Khalidi, Nassif Falak
4.0
Baghdad Noir is another short story collection in Akaschic's long series of story collections set in various cities around the world. This time around, the stories all center on Baghdad and its outskirts, and thirteen of the collection's fourteen stories are written by Iraqi authors. As in all short story collections I've ever read, the stories can be a little hit-or-miss depending on the taste of the individual reader, but as a whole, Baghdad Noir is well worth reading.
The stories focus on everything from everyday life to the intrigues and dangers common to war torn cities around the world, and the writers do a good job in capturing the atmosphere within which all their mysteries and crimes take place. One of the more interesting stories, precisely because it focuses on a period seldom captured in fiction today, is set in 1950. That story, "Baghdad House," though, has a bit of a nebulous endings and is not among my favorites, as it turns out.
My favorites are "Jasim's File," a story with a bit of a twist at the end about a man who escapes from a mental institution when the building is hit in during a firefight, and "Baghdad on Borrowed Time," a well crafted story about someone taking revenge on numerous members of Saddam Hussein's brutal regime. I also like the cleverness of the one story in the book by a non-Iraqi, American Roy Scranton, called "Homecoming," another story of revenge and murder - a combination that I can well imagine occurs in Baghdad today way more than anyone would like to think.
The stories focus on everything from everyday life to the intrigues and dangers common to war torn cities around the world, and the writers do a good job in capturing the atmosphere within which all their mysteries and crimes take place. One of the more interesting stories, precisely because it focuses on a period seldom captured in fiction today, is set in 1950. That story, "Baghdad House," though, has a bit of a nebulous endings and is not among my favorites, as it turns out.
My favorites are "Jasim's File," a story with a bit of a twist at the end about a man who escapes from a mental institution when the building is hit in during a firefight, and "Baghdad on Borrowed Time," a well crafted story about someone taking revenge on numerous members of Saddam Hussein's brutal regime. I also like the cleverness of the one story in the book by a non-Iraqi, American Roy Scranton, called "Homecoming," another story of revenge and murder - a combination that I can well imagine occurs in Baghdad today way more than anyone would like to think.