Bakhtiyar Ali (b. Sulaymaniyah, Iraqi
Kurdistan,1966)livesinCologne,Germany.
He is a novelist, literary critic, essayist
and poet, and is widely considered one
of the most prominent Kurdish writers.
He has published nine novels and several
collections of essays and poetry.
The novel excerpted here,
I Stared at the
Night of the City
(Periscope, 2016) is the
first major contemporary Kurdish work to
appear in English.
Translated fromSorani Kurdish by Kareem
Abdulrahmen
Bakhtiyar Ali