Salim Barakat

Salim Barakat (, ; born 1 September 1951 in Qamishli) is a Kurdish-Syrian novelist and poet. He is considered one of the innovative poets and novelists writing in Arabic. Since the 1970s, he has published numerous novels, poetry collections, biographies and children's books. Several of his works have been translated into Kurdish, English, French, German, Swedish and other languages.

Life and career

Barakat was brought up in the city of Qamishli in an area in northern Syria with a large Kurdish population and spent most of his youth there. In 1970 he moved to Damascus to study Arabic literature but after one year he moved to Beirut where he stayed until 1982. While in Beirut he published five volumes of poetry, a diary and two volumes of autobiography. He moved to Cyprus and worked as a managing editor of the prestigious Palestinian journal '' Al Karmel'', whose editor was Mahmoud Darwish. In 1999 he moved to Sweden, where he still resides.

He wrote about Kurdish culture, as well as Arab, Assyrian, Armenian, Circassian and Yazidi culture. His earliest major prose work, ''Al-Jundub al-Hadidi'' (''The Iron Grasshopper''), is an autobiography of his childhood in Qamishli.

Stefan G. Meyer said "Barkat's style is probably the closest by any Arab writer's to that of Latin American magical realism" and has called Barakat "perhaps the master prose stylist writing in Arabic today".

In the 2006 anthology '' Literature from the "Axis of Evil",'' an excerpt from his novel ''Jurists of Darkness'' (1985) in English was published by Words Without Borders.

According to online magazine Literary hub, Barakat had been one of the official candidates for the 2022 Nobel Prize for Literature.

Published works

in English

* An excerpt from his novel ''Jurists of Darkness.'' In: ''Literature from the Axis of Evil : Writing from Iran, Iraq, North Korea and Other Enemy Nations: A Words Without Borders Anthology''. 2006. New York: New Press.

* Salīm Barakāt, Huda J. Fakhreddine and Jayson Iwen. 2021. ''Come, Take a Gentle Stab: Selected Poems.'' London: Seagull Books, ISBN 9781803091952.

* Salīm Barakāt and Huda J. Fakhreddine. 2024. ''The Universe, All at Once: Selected Poems.'' London: Seagull Books, ISBN 9781803094038.

in Arabic

Novels

* (1985) ''The Sages of Darkness'' ()
* (1987) ''Geometric Spirits'' ()
* (1990) ''The Feathers'' ()
* (1993) ''The Camps of Infinity'' ()
* (1994) ''The Astrologers on the Tuesday of Death: Crossing of the Flamingo'' ()
* (1996) ''The Astrologers on the Tuesday of Death: Cosmos'' ()
* (1997) ''The Astrologers on the Tuesday of Death: The Liver of Milaeus'' ()
* (1999) ''Debris of the Second Eternity'' ()
* (2001) ''Seals and Nebula'' ()
* (2003) ''Delshad'' ()
* (2004) ''The Caves of Haydrahodahose'' ()
* (2005) ''Thadrimis'' ()
* (2006) ''Novice Dead'' ()
* (2007) ''The Sand Ladders'' ()
* (2008) ''The Anguish of Indescribable Perplexing Intimacy in the Voice of Sarmak'' ()
* (2010) ''The Agitation of Geese'' ()
* (2010) ''Crushed Hoofs in Haydrahodahose'' ()
* (2011) ''Vacant Sky Over Jerusalem'' ()
* (2012) ''Vacant Sky Over Jerusalem, Part II'' ()
* (2013) ''The Mermaid and her Daughters'' ()
* (2014) ''Prisoners of Mount Ayayanu East'' ()
* (2016) ''Regions of the Djinn'' ()
* (2016) ''The Captives of Sinjar'' ()
* (2017) ''The Roaring of Shadows in Zenobia's Gardens'' ()
* (2018) ''A Biography of Existence and a Brief History of Resurrection'' ()

* (2019) ''What about the Jewish lady Rachel?'' ()
* (2020) ''Encyclopedia of Perfection without Distortion: The Genesis of Minerals'' ()
* (2021) ''Medusa does not comb her hair'' ()
* (2021) ''The Snow is more treacherous in the Spruce Forests'' ()
* (2022) ''Those Little Girls and their Paper Bags'' ()
* (2023) ''The Eleven Delights of Suicide and The Measure of Deceits in the Spiritual States of Jalaluddin Rumi'' ()
* (2024) ''Heads and Spices'' ()

Poetry

* (1973) ''Each Newcomer Shall Hail Me, So Shall Each Outgoer'' ()
* (1975) ''Thus Do I Disperse Moussissana'' ()
* (1977) ''For the Dust, for Shamdin, for Cycles of Prey and Cycles of Kingdoms'' ()
* (1979) ''The Throngs'' ()
* (1981) ''The Cranes'' ()
* (1983) ''By the Very Traps, by the Very Foxes Leading the Wind'' ()
* (1991) ''The Falconer'' ()
* (1996) ''Recklessness of the Ruby'' ()
* (1997) ''Confrontations, Covenants, Threshing Floors, Adversities, etc.'' ()
* (2000) ''Hefts'' ()
* (2005) ''Lexicon'' ()
* (2008) ''The People of Three O'clock at Dawn on the Third Thursday'' ()
* (2009) ''Translating Basalt'' ()
* (2011) ''The Flood'' ()
* (2012) ''The Haughtiness of Homogeneity'' ()
* (2012) ''Gods'' ()
* (2014) ''The North of Hearts or their West'' ()
* (2015) ''Syria'' ()
* (2016) ''The Great Poem of Love'' ()
* (2016) ''All the doors'' ()
* (2018) ''Alerting the Animal to its Ancestry'' ()
* (2019) ''The Spoils of the Athletes and the Teachings they adhere to'' ()
* (2021) ''The Five Hundred Shrapnels'' ()
* (2022) ''Spiritual Denunciation'' ()
* (2023) ''A Battle in the Water Time Zone'' ()

Autobiographies

* (1976) ''Church of the Warrior'' ()
* (1980) ''The Iron Grasshopper'' ()
* (1982) ''Play High the Trumpet, Play It the Highest'' ()

Collections

* (1992) ''Diwan'' ()
* (1999) ''Pharmacopoeia'' () (Collected essays)
* (2007) ''Poetical Works'' () (Collected poems 1973–2005)
* (2010) ''Expediting the Loans of Prose'' () (Essays and articles 1983–2008)
* (2017) ''Poetical Works 2'' () (Collected poems 2008–2016)
* (2020) ''Agony as Mathematics, Yearning as Geometry'' () (Interviews and essays)
* (2024) ''Inciting Meanings Against their Origins and Escalating Calls for Prose Rights'' () (Aphorisms)

I

Children's books

* (1975) ''Narjis'' ()
* (1980) ''Who Guards the Earth?'' ()
* (1980) ''Sleep'' ()

See also

* Syrian literature

References

External links

Excerpt from Salim Barakat's novel ''The Feathers''

{{DEFAULTSORT:Barakat, Salim
1951 births
20th-century Syrian poets
People from Qamishli
Syrian Kurdish people
Syrian novelists
Kurdish poets
Syrian emigrants to Sweden
21st-century Syrian poets