SPOILERS AHEAD
Blasim uses varieties of form and POV to explore the hardships experienced by Iraqi citizens spanning multiple wars and occupations in a way that is wholly unique and horrifying. Blasim uses brief moments of repetition (like the use of the word "one" in "Thousand and One Knives") and slipping in and out of 2nd person POV to highlight the tone of the collection, specifically by bringing the reader into the protagonist's experience as vividly as possible for each story.
The first story, "The Corpse Exhibition" is the perfect choice to set the tone of this collection and is written in 2nd person POV though it mostly feels like standard 3rd person limited narration. The story functions as almost a training video for murders who display the bodies of their victims in a variety of increasingly shocking ways for the sake of message and "art." Functionally, this piece lets the reader know that the rest of the collection will be violent, gory, and as exploitative as the media (as briefly discussed using the example of Al Jazeera in "The Reality and The Record") to depict the unpleasantries of war.
Blasim is able to capture complex emotions and characters where heroes and villains don't really exist. The cycle of war portrayed by Blasim is one where everyone is unable to escape the violence and anger, much like "The Bus Driver Who Wanted to be God and Other Stories" by Keret. The distinguishing factors between Blasim and Keret is primarily one of author perspective: Keret writes about war and occupation from the perspective of the occupiers (Israel) where Blasim writes from the perspective of the occupied (Iraq). The occupiers change throughout the collection, from the U.S. military, to racial groups (for example, the Kurdish), and terror groups, but the result is always the same: anger, fear, violence, a desperate need for survival. This lends itself to the overarching tone of the collection: impending doom.
