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Kalima publishes Arabic version of Kurdish book

ABU DHABI - Kalima, the translation project of the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and heritage, has published the Arabic version of a book entitled Mirname — bi erebi terket (Mirname — The Poet and the Prince).

The book was both written and translated by Kurdish novelist Jan Dost.

The novel’s events take place throughout the Ottoman Empire in the seventeenth century.

It particularly focuses on the town of Bayazid which lies on the border between the Safavid and Ottoman empires. The author portrays a variety of backgrounds and scientific trends which he examines through the different visions of more than twenty individual personalities.

The book is written in the form of a biography, documenting the life of a Kurdish poet and Sufi who fought injustice using only a pen and ink.

The poet is Ahmad Khani (1651 — 1709) who was one of the most influential literary figures in the history of the Kurds. Dost blends realism with flights of bizarre imagination in this novel. Some say that ink is the silent hero of Mirname. Throughout the novel, many of the characters claim that ink rained down from the sky, falling in a steady drizzle, on the morning of the poet’s burial.

The novel uses ink as a symbol for intellectualism, and it is treated as a kind of ‘key bearer’ by the author. It encourages us to portray world conflicts through a coherent poetic language. Its narrative is primarily polyphonic.

Dost was born in 1965 and moved to Aleppo between 1985 and 1988 where he studied natural sciences. He left in his third year in order to dedicate his time to literature and writing.

Dost began his literary activity when he was very young. He wrote an epic poem in 1984, which was published in 1991 in Germany and became famous among the Kurds.

He went on to write a number of books and novels and won the first prize in a Kurdish short story competition in Syria in 1993. In 2010 he won the Kurdish Poetry Award in Syria.

One of Dost’s stories “A handful of earth,” was made into a short film in Germany. Another story entitled “A burning dream”
was performed as a play in Turkey.