Sci-fi stories envisage Iraq in 100 years
A Chinese-run hive of digital development dependent on "water trains" from Europe. A hi-tech destination for a new generation of religious pilgrims. A dried-out wasteland with little left to trade but corpses and sand.
When the award-winning Iraqi writer Hassan Blasim and British publisher Ra Page asked Iraqi writers to imagine their homeland in 2103, 100 years after the US-led invasion, a plethora of haunting, dissonant - and sometimes uplifting - versions of the future emerged.
The resulting anthology, Iraq +100, published in the UK this week mixes science fiction with other genres including fantasy, fairy tale and satire.
The aim was to overturn literary traditions Mr Blasim felt had become staid under decades of censorship and violence, and create a platform for a generation of younger writers shaped by the internet and modern technology.