The corpse exhibition

'The Madman of Freedom Square' (Comma Press, £10, 96 pages) and 'The Iraqi Christ' (Comma Press, £10, 144 pages) by Hassan Blasim, both translated by Jonathan Wright

Hassan Blasim has been described by the Guardian as "perhaps the best writer of Arabic fiction alive." That's a lofty claim, but the wider critical response has been similarly eulogistic since his first volume of stories, "The Madman of Freedom Square," captured attention in 2009. That book was followed by the equally macabre "The Iraqi Christ" in 2013, and Penguin published a selection from both volumes amid much fanfare last year. Acclaim in the Arab world has been slightly less fulsome (more about that later), but Blasim's blistering, visceral tales certainly have struck a chord in a West searching for a literary voice to attach to modern Iraq's headline-commanding anguish.

Blasim fled his native country shortly after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. He spent three years in the hellish limbo of the asylum process in Turkey and Bulgaria before settling as a refugee in Finland, where he has occupied himself writing and making documentary films for Finnish TV. His stories are set in Iraq and Europe - taut, urgent narratives full of extreme violence and grotesque details, laced with an almost phantasmagorical surrealism and pitch black humor. In one tale about a migrant truck on the road to Berlin, the world is described as "very fragile, frightening and inhumane. All it needs is a little shake for its hideous nature and its primeval fangs to emerge." Of course, Iraq has had rather more than "a little shake" over the past 30 or so years, and Blasim's writing is one grimly eloquent testimony.

Critics sometimes suggest that Blasim is working in the tradition of luminaries...