Dead Iraqis: Selected Short Stories of Ellis Sharp

In a society like ours there are bound to be disagreements about this and that. It is only natural. But although we may disagree on many things, I think we can all agree on one thing. The nice thing about dead Iraqis is they don’t smell. DEAD IRAQIS brings together the best short fiction of one of Britain’s leading underground writers. Written against the grain of commercial literary fiction, these stories from the era of neo-liberalism are often darkly comic in thrust, with a strong historical or political dimension. Emily Bronte runs off to Nicaragua and starts a new life as a guerrilla. Stalin fakes his death and becomes a Conservative MP. Karl Marx is discovered alive and well and living on the Isle of Wight. Using a range of techniques from collage to surreal satire, Sharp savages the values and delusions of the age, mocking everything from crop circles to political biography and imperialism. But Sharp is also a writer acutely conscious of literary tradition. Informed by influences as various as Swift, Gogol, Proust and Joyce, these fictions engage with language and the nature of narrative as they explore history, story-telling, memory, philosophy and the monstrous temper of an age steeped in blood. Sharp targets the deadly absurdities and frustrations of our civilisation. Ken MacLeod Ellis Sharp writes fiction unlike any other writer I have encountered to date … his books are jam-packed with wondrous things. Lee Rourke Ferociously brilliant. Iain Banks Ellis Sharp is an outstanding rebuke to all those who think political fiction means drab and po-faced fiction. Who says it can’t be surreal, enraged and utterly invigorating? China Mieville