The Corpse Exhibition shows us the war as we have never seen it before. Here is a world not only of soldiers and assassins, hostages and car bombers, refugees and terrorists, but also of madmen and prophets, angels and djinni, sorcerers and spirits. Blending shocking realism with flights of fantasy, Hassan Blasim offers us a pageant of horrors, as haunting as the photos of Abu Ghraib and as difficult to look away from, but shot through with a gallows humor that yields an unflinching comedy of the macabre. Gripping and hallucinatory, this is a new kind of storytelling forged in the crucible of war.

The corpse exhibition --The killers and the compass -- The green zone rabbit -- An army newspaper -- Crosswords -- The hole -- The madman of Freedom Square -- The Iraqi Christ -- A thousand and one knives -- The composer -- The song of the goats -- The reality and the record -- That inauspicious smile -- The nightmares of Carlos Fuentes.