REVIEW: “The Curse of the Mud Ball Kid” by Mazen Maarouf

Review of Mazen Maarouf, Jonathan Wright (trans.), “The Curse of the Mud Ball Kid”, in Basma Ghalayini, ed., Palestine+100, (Comma Press, 2019): 171-214 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

Oh, my. Just…oh my. This was by far the strangest, most bizarre (and longest!) of the entire collection. One part science fiction, two parts surrealism, with a blithe disregard for anything so basic as laws of nature. It was unapologetic in its oddness, and every page was a turner. I can’t even begin to summarise the plot, only say that this story hooked me in a way that none other in the anthology did, and it was an excellent way to close the collection out.

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “The Gardens of Babylon” by Hassan Blasim

Review of Hassan Blasim, Jonathan Wright (trans.), “The Gardens of Babylon”, Iraq+100, edited by Hassan Blasim (Comma Press, 2016): 11-33 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

For a speculative story about how the world will be in the future, “The Gardens of Babylon” spends a lot of time looking back to the past, with the speculative (or in this case, properly science fiction) elements primarily a means of allowing the characters to not just look backwards but also experience what life then/now was like. The title itself is intended to invoke a memory of the historic wonder of the ancient world; the titular gardens in this story are very clearly presented as a new vision and interpretation of paradise.

The story is woven out of two threads: One is the story of a present-day man who worked as a translator, translating Raymond Carver stories, and the other is the story of the narrator, in the future, who is tasked with converting the stories of the past — include the tale of the translator — into an interactive game for people to enjoy in paradise. Both the narrator and the translator have similar narrative voices and styles, as well as similar goals — the narrator to preserve history through retelling it, the translator to preserve it through translating it. At times, it is difficult to keep the two speakers and the their two tales distinct; but this confusion ends up being exploited in the resolution of the story.

Two things struck me about Blasim’s vision of the future as depicted in this story:

  • First, this is the second story in the anthology wherein the dominant power is the Chinese.
  • Second, the biggest influence on the future was not the war or the fall-out from war, but rather climate change. The war is basically an afterthought, a nonevent.

This is part of what I have enjoyed so much about this collection — the sheer diversity of imagined futures.

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment