Kurdistan: The Book List

Kurdish literature, shaped by centuries of storytelling, remains under-explored by many international readers. Whether you are encountering Kurdish literature for the first time or seeking to deepen your engagement with it, these books offer compelling stories, distinctive voices, and invaluable insight into one of the world’s most enduring cultures.

FICTION

The Shadeless Border by Jiyar Jahin Fard, translated by Chiya Parvizpur, Common Notions, forthcoming August 2026

This magical realist meditation on loss, displacement, and the fragile border between life and death follows a grieving family as they try to bring home the body of a deceased man at the contested border between Iran and Iraq. Set over the course of a 24-hour period, the novel, through a uniquely diverse and surprising set of narrators, including a coffin and a tembur (both carved from the wood of the same tree), different family members, death, and the border itself, introduces us to Azad and his family, whose life stories are closely entangled with the histories of the countries in which they reside.

Hyper by Agri Ismaïl, Coffee House Press 2026

This novel, reviewed in TMR by Aryan Omar Hassan, is a sweeping family saga that follows a Kurdish family forced into exile after the father, Rafiq Hardi Kermanj, a communist leader, flees Iran for London. Decades later, his three children pursue very different lives in London, Dubai, and New York, consumed by money, ambition, and the pressures of global capitalism. Hyper explores belonging, displacement, and whether human connection can survive in a world increasingly driven by wealth and financial systems.

Sleeping in the Courtyard, edited by Holly Mason Badra, University of Arkansas Press 2025

Holly Mason Badra is keen on lifting the veil from the general narrative of war and conflict relating to the Kurds — their history and culture — over the centuries. She wanted to fill a gap, best expressed in her own words: “When I set out to curate a transnational, multi-genre anthology of contemporary Kurdish women and nonbinary writers, I was eager to create something that I wished already existed. I wanted to see a collection in English that celebrated the creative work of Kurdish women writing and publishing around the world.”

Reviewed in TMR by Matt Broomfield, several works here explore the impact of the countless forms of militarized displacement, cultural destruction, and mass genocide endured by Kurds. Other pieces illuminate Kurdish experiences of desire, friendship, empowerment, familial intricacies, and more. The writers in these pages take risks both in craft and content — and in some cases, just by daring to write and publish. What emerges in Sleeping in the Courtyard is the antithesis of erasure.

Lovers of Franz K. by Burhan Sönmez, translated by Sami Hêzil, Other Press 2025

Set in 1968 during a period of political unrest in Europe, the story begins after an attempted assassination of Max Brod, the friend who published Franz Kafka’s manuscripts despite the writer’s wish that they be destroyed. Sönmez, president of PEN International since 2021, vividly recreates a key period of history when the Berlin Wall divided Europe, and women were fighting for freedom and against tradition, many adopting Jean Seberg’s iconic short haircut from Breathless. More than a typical mystery, Lovers of Franz K. is a brilliant exploration of the value of books and the issues of anti-Semitism, immigration, and violence that recur in Kafka’s life and writings.

The Competition of Unfinished Stories by Şener Özmen, translated by Nicholas Glastonbury, Sandorf Passage 2025

Set in Turkish-occupied Kurdistan, Sertac, a vehement atheist, teaches theology classes at an Islamic school while attempting to complete the stories he starts writing. As Sertac’s frustrations mount, his marriage falls apart, fully untethering him from reality as he navigates through a throng of eclectic, larger-than-life characters attempting to inject levity into the madness that haunts him. The Competition of Unfinished Stories is a novel about schizophrenia and the emasculation of life under colonial occupation, and about how imagination can sometimes be more paralyzing than liberating.

The Potato Eaters: Stories by Farhad Pirbal, translated by Alana Marie Levinson-LaBrosse & Jiyar Homer, Deep Vellum 2024

Reviewed in TMR in 2024, The Potato Eaters is a short story collection exploring life on the margins of Kurdish society. Through dark satire, symbolism, and sharp realism, the stories examine themes of poverty, exile, isolation, political oppression, and the search for dignity. It imagines a town devastated by famine where potatoes become the only source of survival and eventually replace money as the basis of society.

Daughters of Smoke and Fire by Ava Homa, Overlook Press 2021

This literary and political award-winning coming-of-age novel weaves 50 years of modern Kurdish history through the story of a family facing oppression and injustices all too familiar to the Kurds. Ava Homa, a writer, journalist, and activist specializing in women’s issues and Middle Eastern affairs, was born and raised in the province of Kurdistan in Iran. Her novel exposes two layers of oppression: the general marginalization of the Kurdish people in Iran, and the patriarchal dominance and power exerted on women specifically and the restrictions placed on their education, work, relationships, dress, and personal autonomy. Inspired by the life of Kurdish human rights activist Farzad Kamangar and published to coincide with the 10th anniversary of his execution, Daughters of Smoke and Fire is an evocative portrait of the lives and stakes faced by 40 million stateless Kurds. Perfect for fans of Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun.

Kurdistan +100: Stories from a Future State, edited by Orsola Casagrande & Mustafa Gundogdu, translated by Amy Spangler, Nicholas Glastonbury, Andrew Penny, Mustafa Gundogdu, Rojin Hamo, Khazan Jangiz, Harriet Paintin, Darya Najim, Dibar Çelik & Kate Ferguson, Comma Press 2023

A collection of 13 speculative fiction (science fiction and futuristic) short stories by contemporary Kurdish writers that asks a central question: What might Kurdistan look like in the year 2046 — a hundred years after the first glimmer of Kurdish independence, the short-lived Republic of Mahabad? This anthology offers a space for new expressions and new possibilities in the ongoing struggle for self-determination. Kurdish authors (including several present and former political prisoners) imagine a freer future, one in which it is no longer effectively illegal to be a Kurd. From future eco-activism to drone warfare to the reanimation of victims of past massacres, these stories explore the present struggles through the prism of futurism to dazzling effect.

Nonfiction

The Purple Color of Kurdish Politics: Women Politicians Write from Prison, edited by Gültan Kışanak, Pluto Press 2022

A collection of prison writings from 22 Kurdish women politicians, who reflect on their personal and collective struggles against patriarchy and anti-Kurdish repression in Turkey and on the radical feminist principles and practices through which they transformed the political structures and state offices in which they operated. Gültan Kışanak, a Kurdish journalist and former MP, was elected co-mayor of Diyarbakır in 2014. Two years later, the Turkish state arrested and imprisoned her. Her story is remarkable, but not unique. While behind bars, she wrote about her own experiences and collected similar accounts from other Kurdish women, all co-chairs, co-mayors, and MPs in Turkey; all incarcerated on political grounds.

Poetry

Come, Take a Gentle Stab: Selected Poems by Salim Barakat, translated by Huda J. Fakhreddine & Jayson Iwen, Seagull Books 2021

A collection of poems introducing renowned Kurdish Syrian writer Salim Barkat to an English-language audience for the first time. Come, Take a Gentle Stab features selections from his most acclaimed works of poetry, including excerpts from his book-length poems, rendered into an English that captures the exultation of language for which he is famous.

Further Reading:

• Safe Corridor by Jan Dost, translated by Marilyn Booth, Dar Arab, 2025
• Birds in a Gale by Ata Nahai, translated by Chiya Parvizpur & Hourieh Maleki Qouzloo, Common Notions Press, 2025
• Nightlands by Selim Temo, translated by Alana Marie Levinson-LaBrosse & Zêdan Xelef, Pinsapo, 2024
• The Singularity by Balsam Karam, translated by Saskia Vogel, The Feminist Press, 2024
• The Last Pomegranate Tree by Bakhtiyar Ali, translated by Kareem Abdulrahman, Archipelago, 2023
• Kurdish Women’s Stories, edited by Houzan Mahmoud, Pluto Press, 2021
• About:blank by Tracy Fuad, University of Pittsburgh Press, 2021
• Butterfly Valley by Sherko Bekas, translated by Choman Hardi, ARC Publications, 2018
• Considering the Women by Choman Hardi, Bloodaxe Books, 2015
• The Man in Blue Pyjamas: A Prison Memoir by Jalal Barzanji, translated by Sabah A. Salih, University of Alberta Press, 2011