Kurdish novelist tops German list of best translated novels

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region-- The German translation of the Kurdish novelist Bachtyar Ali's celebrated book "Der letzte Granatapfel" has been promoted by book promoter Die Taz as this fall's best translated novel into the German language from Asian, African and Latin American literature.

The novel originally written in Kurdish in 2003 was translated into German in June this year by the Unionsverlag publishing house and received relatively positive reviews in German media.

"Late, but not too late 'The Last Pomegranate' is now translated into German," writes literary critic Stefan Weidner in Sueddeutsche Zeitung. "We should have read this long time ago. I see immediately why the author is an icon in his native country."

After decades of solitary confinement in a desert prison, former Peshmerga fighter Muzafer Subhdam is released. He is obsessed with the idea of his lost son Saryasi whom he left behind as an infant and now wishes to find. The book is the story of this search.

A prolific writer Ali is perhaps the most read novelist of the modern Kurdish literature writing in Sorani dialect, with a wide readership that includes both old and younger generations of Kurds.

Ali has been living in self-imposed exile in Germany since mid 1990s but writes regularly for various papers in Kurdistan Region.