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In Search of a Kurdish Novel that Tells Us Who the Kurds Are

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Hashem Ahmadzadeh
Hashem Ahmadzadeh*
Affiliation:
Kurdish Studies, University of Exeter
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Abstract

Despite the fact that during the 1930s some Kurdish novels were published in the former Soviet Union, it was only towards the end of the twentieth century that this literary genre became an established literary tradition among the Kurds. Due to various political factors, the Kurdish novel has not been identified with any nation-state. In fact, the concept of the Kurdish novel refers to all such literature written in Kurdish, regardless of different orthographies and dialects. Alongside the published novels in Kurdish, there have been some Kurdish writers who have written their novels in other languages. This article aims to look for a novel that contributes to the representation of the Kurds and their identity and political condition.

Type
Research Article
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 40 , Issue 5 , December 2007 , pp. 579 - 592
Copyright
Copyright © The International Society for Iranian Studies 2007

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References

1 For a more detailed and critical definition of “Kurdish literature,” see Ahmadzadeh, Hashem, Nation and Novel: A Study of Persian and Kurdish Narrative Discourse (Uppsala, 2003), 127–139Google Scholar. In 2005, Tewsen Rashid, who is originally a Kurd from the former Soviet Union and currently lives in Australia, was awarded a prize from the Aras Publishing Centre in Hewler (Arbil) in Iraqi Kurdistan. In the same year, Ata Nahayee, a Kurdish novelist from Iranian Kurdistan, was awarded another prize from the same body. In 2006, Mihmet Uzun, originally from Turkey's Kurdistan and living in Sweden, was given the same prize. Some of the works of all these novelists have been published in Iraqi Kurdistan.

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22 For an argument about this issue, see Ahmadzadeh, Nation and Novel, 127–138.

23 In 2002, I organized a conference on the Kurdish novel in Stockholm where I introduced two of the most famous Kurdish novelists, Mihmed Uzun who lives in Sweden and writes in Kurmanji, and Bakhtyar Ali who lives in Germany and writes in Sorani. They had no knowledge of each other's works. In recent years, some initial efforts have been made to transcribe and translate Kurmanji and Sorani novels into each other.

24 For a study of the traces of statelessness in the Kurdish novel, see Ahmadzadeh, Hashem, “Longing for State in the Kurdish Narrative Discourse,” in The Role of the State in West Asia, ed. Rabo, Annika and Utas, Bo (Stockholm, 2005), 63–76Google Scholar.

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35 It must be mentioned that the translation of the first word of the national anthem is wrong. “Ey reqib” really means “Oh my enemies,” not “my friends” as it has been translated several times in the text.

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46 Saleem, My Father's Rifle, 74. After living in Italy and France since the early 1980s, Hiner Saleem's dreams were realized and he became a successful film producer. His successful film, Vodka Lemon, was awarded the San Marco Prize by the Venice Film Festival in 2003. In 2006, his Kilometer Zero was nominated for the Oscar Prize.

47 For an interesting account of ‘Kurdish identities’ and cultural tool kits, especially in Turkey, see Romano, David, The Kurdish Nationalist Movement: Opportunities, Mobilization and Identity (Cambridge, 2006), 101–117CrossRefGoogle Scholar.