Bachtyar Ali
| Bextiyar ʻElî | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1960 Sulaymaniyah, Iraqi Kurdistan |
| Occupation | Writer |
| Literary movement | Postmodernism, magic realism, literary fiction |
| Notable works | I Stared at the Night of the City |
| Notable awards | HARDI Literature Prize (2009), Sherko Bekas Literature Prize (2014) |
| Website | |
| www |
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Bachtyar Ali Muhammed (Kurdish: بەختیار عەلی, also transcribed Bextyar Elî, Bakhtiyar Ali, or Bakhtyar Ali), was born in the city of Slemani in Iraqi Kurdistan in 1960. He is a Kurdish novelist and intellectual, a prolific literary critic, essayist, and poet. Ali started out as a poet and essayist, but has established himself as an influential novelist from the mid-1990s. He has published six novels, and several collections of poetry and essays.
Since the mid-1990s, Ali has been living in Germany (Frankfurt, Cologne and most recently Bonn). In his academic essays, he has dealt with various subjects, such as the 1988 Saddam-era Anfal genocide campaign, the relationship between the power and intellectuals and other philosophical issues. He often employs western philosophical concepts to interpret an issue in Kurdish society, modifying or adapting them to his context.
In 2016 his novel Ghezelnus u Baxekani Xeyal ("Ghazalnus and the Gardens of Imagination") was published in English under the title I Stared at the Night of the City . The first Kurdish-langage novel to be published in English, it was translated by London-based journalist and translator Kareem Abdulrahman. In the same year, his novel Duwahamin Henari Dunya ("The World's Last Pomegranate") was translated into German by Rawezh Salim and Ute Cantera-Lang under the title Der letzte Granatapfel ("The Last Pomegranate").
Ali finished his pre-university education in Slemani. He attended Shaykh Salam Primary School, Azmar Secondary School and Halkawt Preparatory School. He started studying Geology at the University of Sulaimani, and later Salahaddin University in Arbil (Kurdish, Hawler:هەولێر), the current capital of Iraq;s Kurdistan Region. In 1983 he was wounded when he participated in a protest rally against Saddam's Ba'th Party and the protesters were shot at. In the same year he quit his studies due to political reasons. Ali speaks Kurdish, Arabic, Persian, German, and has a working knowledge of English.
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