Books published by Comma Press

Chess-playing people-traffickers, suicidal photographers, absurdist sound sculptors, cat-loving rebel sympathisers, murderous storytellers... The characters in Hassan Blasim's debut novel are not the inventions of a wild imagination, but real-life refugees and people whose lives have been devastated by war. Interviewed by Hassan Owl, an aspiring Iraq-born writer, they become the subjects of an online art project, a blog that blurs the boundaries between fiction and autobiography, reportage and the novel. Framed by an email correspondence with the mysterious Alia, a translator of the Romanian philosopher Emil Cioran, the project leads us through the bars, brothels and bathhouses of Hassan's past and present in a journey of trauma, violence, identity and desire. Taking its conceit from the Islamic tradition that says God has 99 names, the novel trains a kaleidoscopic lens on the multiplicity of experiences behind Europe's so-called 'migrant crisis', and asks how those who have been displaced might find themselves again.

Bringing together 28 acclaimed women writers, artists, scientists and entrepeneurs from across Europe, this powerful and timely anthology looks at an ever-changing Europe from a variety of different perspectives and offers hope and insight into how we might begin to rebuild.

The Book of Newcastle brings together some of the city's most renowned literary talents, along with exciting new voices, proving that while Newcastle continues to feel the effects of its lost industrial past, it is also a city striving for a future that brims with promise.

A police officer tortures one last suspect in the most important assignment of his career: to find the ultimate Truth... A woman confesses her love to a reclusive, masked man in a video rental shop... A disgraced doctor confronts a man whose job it is to create rumours that spread across Cairo... Founded over a thousand years ago under the sign of Mars "e;the victorious"e;, Cairo has long been a welcoming destination for explorers and tourists, drawn by traces of the ancient cities of Memphis and Heliopolis. More recently, the Egyptian capital has become a city determined to forget. Since 2013, the events of the Arab Spring have been gradually erased from its official history. The present is now contested as writers are imprisoned, publishing houses raided, and independent news sites shut down. With a new Administrative Capital being built in the desert east of Cairo, the city s future is also unclear. Here ten new voices offer tentative glimpses into Cairene life, at a time when writing directly about Egypt s greatest challenges is often too dangerous. With intimate views of life, tinged with satire, surrealism, and humour, these stories guide us through the slums and suburbs, bars and backstreets of a city haunted by an unspoken past.

Palestine + 100 poses a question to twelve Palestinian writers: what might your country look like in the year 2048 - a century after the tragedies and trauma of what has come to be called the Nakba? How might this event - which, in 1948, saw the expulsion of over 700,000 Palestinian Arabs from their homes - reach across a century of occupation, oppression, and political isolation, to shape the country and its people? Will a lasting peace finally have been reached, or will future technology only amplify the suffering and mistreatment of Palestinians? Covering a range of approaches - from SF noir, to nightmarish dystopia, to high-tech farce - these stories use the blank canvas of the future to reimagine the Palestinian experience today. Along the way, we encounter drone swarms, digital uprisings, time-bending VR, peace treaties that span parallel universes, and even a Palestinian superhero, in probably the first anthology of science fiction from Palestine ever.

Fourteen leading authors have here been challenged to write fresh fictional interpretations of what the uncanny might mean in the 21st century, to update Freud's famous checklist of what gives us the creeps, and to give the hulking canon of uncanny fiction a shot in the arm, a shock to the neck-bolts...

The stories shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award with Cambridge University 2018 pivot around the theme of loss, and the different ways that individuals, and communities, respond to it. From the son caring for his estranged father, to the widow going out for her first meal alone, the characters in these stories are trying to find ways to repair themselves, looking ahead to a time when grief will eventually soften and sooth. Above all, these stories explore the importance of human connection, and salutary effect of companionship and friendship when all else seems lost.

In this powerful, debut collection, Rania Mamoun expertly blends the real and imagined to create a rich, complex and moving portrait of contemporary Sudan. From painful encounters with loved ones to unexpected new friendships, Mamoun illuminates the breadth of human experience and explores, with humour and compassion, the alienation, isolation and estrangement that is urban life. Translated from the Arabic by Elisabeth Jaquette.

Riga may be over 800 years old as a city, but its status as capital of an independent Latvia is only a century old. The stories gathered here chronicle this growth and on-going transformation, and offer glimpses into the dark humour, rich history and love of the mythic, that sets the city apart.

Modelled on Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, the second volume of Refugee Tales sets out to communicate the experiences of those who, having sought asylum in the UK, find themselves indefinitely detained. Here, poets and novelists create a space in which the stories of those who have been detained can be safely heard, a space in which hospitality is the prevailing discourse and listening becomes an act of welcome.

The Sea Cloak is a collection of 11 stories by the author, journalist, and women's rights campaigner, Nayrouz Qarmout. Drawing from her own experiences growing up in a Syrian refugee camp, as well as her current life in Gaza, these stories stitch together a patchwork of different perspectives into what it means to be a woman in Palestine today.

One of the most prestigious awards for the short story has reached its eleventh year. Hugely successful, the BBC National Short Story Award, in partnership with Booktrust, awards 15,000 to the winning author, with 3000 going to the runner-up. Featuring an all-female shortlist of fantastic writers, the winner will be announced 4th October.

On 7 July 2014 Israel launched a major offensive against the Gaza Strip, lasting 51 days, killing 2145 Palestinians and demolishing 17,200 homes. Here, Atef's diaries of the war show the full extent of that summer's atrocities from the most humble of perspectives: that of a father, fearing for his family's safety, in a one-sided war.

M. John Harrison is a cartographer of the liminal. His work sits at the boundaries between genres - horror and science fiction, fantasy and travel writing - just as his characters occupy the no man's land between the spatial and the spiritual. Here, in his first collection of short fiction for over 15 years, we see the master of the New Wave present unsettling visions of contemporary urban Britain, as well as supernatural parodies of the wider, political landscape. From gelatinous aliens taking over the world's financial capitals, to the middle-aged man escaping the pressures of fatherhood by going missing in his own house... these are weird stories for weird times.

This anthology brings together ten short stories that go beyond the postcards and snapshots, and introduce us to real residents of Rio - young dancers training to be the next stars of samba, exhausted labourers press-ganged into meeting an impossible deadline, nostalgic drag queens... that make Rio the 'marvellous city' it is.