I’m going to make a statement that will piss off fans of weird fiction and “world literature” alike, and say that Hassan Blasim’s The Corpse Exhibition: And Other Stories of Iraq (Penguin) belongs firmly in the horror genre and, more specifically, in the subcategory of Lovecraftian “cosmicism.”

This collection of the Iraqi writer’s short stories achieves in a few true tales what most Western authors of the genre only ever play at. It conjures a real, throbbing darkness, a godless world where characters spew philosophy and poetry with a naturalism born of the most nightmarish of experiences. This