Yet it opens with a peritextual statement, distinguished from the main body of the text by italics, stating:Įveryone staying at the refugee reception centre has two stories – the real one and the one for the record. The story relays the refugee’s narrative in his own words. As its title implies, the story explores the boundaries between fact and fiction, exposing the ways in which refugees necessarily move between the two in an asylum-seeking process that requires them to curate a compelling and convincing tale of political persecution in order to be granted asylum. In this opening short story, an unnamed Iraqi asylum seeker recounts his traumatic experiences of war, kidnapping and torture to an immigration officer at a refugee reception centre in Sweden. ‘The Reality and the Record’ is the first tale in The Madman of Freedom Square (2009), a collection of short stories by Iraqi author Hassan Blasim.
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