The Last Pomegranate Tree: A conversation with Kurdish novelist Bachtyar Ali
Key information
- Date
- Time
-
5:30 pm to 7:00 pm
- Venue
- Main Building, SOAS
- Room
- Khalili Lecture Theatre (KLT)
About this event
"After being held in a desert prison for 21 years, a Peshmerga fighter in Iraq desperately searches for his son, setting off on a quest guided by memory and myth in this imaginative novel...." (New York Times).
Politics has at least two faces in Bachtyar Ali’s works. While his characters are in a constant search to prove their humanity, politics often appears as a barrier in that search. Why does their salvation seem to fall beyond politics? Yet another face is the politics of literature: Kurdish language has lived on the margins of the more dominant languages in the Middle East for centuries.
To celebrate the English publication of The Last Pomegranate Tree by acclaimed Iraqi Kurdish novelist, Bachtyar Ali (winner of Nelly Sachs Prize 2017 & Hilde-Domin Prize of the City of Heidelberg 2023), the SOAS Middle East Institute is delighted to host an evening with Bachtyar Ali and his translator Kareem Abdulrahman, who will be in discussion with Will Forrester and Dara Salam.
They will be discussing contemporary Kurdish fiction and Ali’s place within the wider Kurdish literature, as well as the significance of translating his novels into English.
You will have the opportunity to purchase a copy of The Last Pomegranate Tree and have it signed. The stall is run by Afsana Press.
Photo by Zrng N Gharib via Unsplash
About the speakers
Bachtyar Ali is one of the most prominent contemporary intellectuals from Iraqi Kurdistan. His novels have been translated into Persian, Arabic, Turkish, German, Italian, French and English, a renown very few authors writing in the Kurdish language enjoy. He has written nearly 40 books, including 12 novels, as well as a number of essay books and collections of poetry. In 2017, he was awarded the Nelly Sachs Prize in Germany, joining past recipients such as Milan Kundera, Margaret Atwood and Javier Marías. He is the first author writing in a non-European language to do so. He lives in Cologne, Germany.
Kareem Abdulrahman is a translator and Kurdish affairs analyst. From 2006 to 2014, he worked as a Kurdish media and political analyst for the BBC, where translation was part of his job. He translated Bachtyar Ali’s I Stared at the Night of the City into English (UK; Periscope; 2016), making it the first Kurdish novel to be translated into English. His second translation, The Last Pomegranate Tree, also by Ali, came out in January 2023 (Archipelago Books). He is also the Head of Editorial at Insight Iraq, a political analysis service focusing on Iraq and Kurdish affairs. He lives in London.
Will Forrester is Translation and International Manager at English PEN. He co-edited All Walls Collapse: Stories of Separation (2022) and led the editorial team for Untold’s My Pen Is the Wing of a Bird: New Fiction by Afghan Women(2022). He has worked in the visual arts in Malaysia and as an independent expert for the EU Commission’s Creative Europe programme. He is a Clore Emerging Leader 2022, a Bookseller Rising Star 2023, and an advisory board member at Sinoist Books. He is a judge for the 2023 TA First Translation Prize and the 2024 US National Translation Award. His writing has appeared in the Guardian, Los Angeles Review of Books, London Magazine, and elsewhere.
Dara Salam is a Teaching Fellow in the Department of Politics and International Studies, SOAS University of London. He studied philosophy and politics at Birkbeck, King's College London and LUISS University. He has written and published in the areas of political theory, Middle East politics and Kurdish Studies. His work has been published in academic journals and various media outlets.
Registration
This event will take place in-person and will not be recorded. Registration is required, but please note that seating is on a first-come, first-served basis.
