Politics of Fiction and Translation: A conversation with Kurdish novelist Bachtyar Ali, his translator Kareem Abdulrahman
Date and Time
Location
RETHINKING TRANSLATION
SPEAKERS: Bakhtyar Ali (Author); Kareem Abdulrahman (translator, Kurdish affairs analyst)
Politics has at least two faces in 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. In this context, lliterary translation could be seen as an effort to put the Kurds, the largest minority group without their own nation state, on the cultural map of the world. We will probe questions such as: Where do the politics of publishing and those of the Middle East collide? Is literary translation a means to put the Kurds, the largest minority group without their own nation state, on the world’s cultural map? What unique challenges do translators of Kurdish texts face?
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 (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.
Co-sponsored by the Center for Middle Eastern Affairs.