Bachtyar Ali

Bachtyar Ali, also spelled Bakhtiyar Ali (1966-), was born and raised in Sulaimani, Iraq, and remains one of the most prominent contemporary authors and poets from Iraqi Kurdistan, though today he resides in Germany. Having written over 40 books of fiction, poetry, and criticism, his works have been translated into Kurmanji, Persian, Arabic, German, Italian, French, English, and other languages. Kareem Abdulrahman has translated two of Ali’s novels into English: The Last Pomegranate (Archipelago, 2023) and I Stared at the Night of the City (Periscope, 2016). Among numerous awards in Iraq and Kurdistan, in 2014, Sardam Publishing House awarded him the newly-established Sherko Bekas Literary Prize. In 2017, the city of Dortmund awarded him the Nelly Sachs Prize. He joined past recipients such as Milan Kundera and Margaret Atwood and was the first author writing in a non-European language to be awarded the prize.