Bachtyar Ali’s The Last Pomegranate Tree, the author in discussion with the translator.

Join us for this CenTraS event in a collaboration with UCL Centre for Applied Linguistics for a reading and discussion with prominent Iraqi Kurdish novelist Bachtyar Ali and his English language translator Kareem Abdulrahman, in conversation with Jess Jensen Mitchell.

This event celebrates the UK publication by Afsana Press of Ali’s The Last Pomegranate Tree, a story of fatherhood, friendship and enduring compassion in war-torn Kurdistan - in English translation by Kareem Abdulrahman. 

The New York Times said about the book: “After being held in a desert prison for 21 years, a Peshmerga fighter in Iraq desperately searches for his son, setting off on a quest guided by memory and myth in this imaginative novel.”

Summary of the novel: The Last Pomegranate Tree is a phantasmagoric warren of fact, fabrication, and mystical allegory, set in the aftermath of Saddam Hussein’s rule and Iraq’s Kurdish conflict. Muzafar-i Subhdam, a peshmerga fighter, has spent the last twenty-one years imprisoned in a desert yearning for his son, Saryas, who was only a few days old when Muzafar was captured. Upon his release, Muzafar begins a frantic search, only to learn that Saryas was one of three identical boys who became enmeshed in each other’s lives as war mutilated the region. An inlet to the recesses of a terrifying historical moment, and a philosophical journey of formidable depths, The Last Pomegranate Tree deploys magical realism to interrogate the origins and reverberations of atrocity. It also probes, with a graceful intelligence, unforgettable acts of mercy.

This event invites conversation and reflection on a number of questions, including: the themes and techniques deployed in the novel, as well as Ali’s place on the map of contemporary Kurdish literature; the significance of literature for the Kurds, the largest minority group without their own nation state, whose language and culture have so often been brutally suppressed. 

In this context, literary translation could be seen as an effort to put the Kurds on the cultural map of the world. We will probe questions such as: Where do the politics of publishing and those of the Middle East collide? What unique challenges do translators of Kurdish texts face? 

Bachtyar Ali and Kareem Abdulrahman will also talk about their collaborative process, in conversation with Jess Jensen Mitchell.

About the Speakers

Bachtyar Ali is one of the most prominent contemporary intellectuals from Iraqi Kurdistan. His novels have been translated into Persian, Arabic, Turkish, German, Italian, French and English, a renown very few authors writing in the Kurdish language enjoy. He has written nearly 40 books, including 12 novels, as well as a number of essay books and collections of poetry. In 2017, he was awarded the Nelly Sachs Prize in Germany, joining past recipients such as Milan Kundera, Margaret Atwood and Javier Marías. He is the first author writing in a non-European language to do so.  In 2024 he was honoured with the prestigious German award Hilde Domin Prize for literature in exile. He lives in Cologne.

Kareem Abdulrahman is a translator and Kurdish affairs analyst. From 2006 to 2014, he worked as a Kurdish media and political analyst for the BBC, where translation was part of his job. He translated Bachtyar Ali’s I Stared at the Night of the City into English (UK; Periscope; 2016), making it the first Kurdish novel to be translated into English. He is also the Head of Editorial at Insight Iraq, a political analysis service focusing on Iraq and Kurdish affairs. He lives in London.

Jess Jensen Mitchell researches and translates Polish literature. She recently completed a doctorate at the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Harvard University. Her translations have been featured in the Penguin Book of Polish Short Stories, Asymptote, and Two Lines. Her first book-length translation will be published by Open Letter Books next year.

All are welcome and there is no need to register.