Jan Dost


Jan Dost,, is a Syrian Kurdish poet, writer and translator. He has written several novels both in his native Kurmanji Kurdish language and in Arabic. He is known as a prolific Kurdish writer, with several of his novels in the context of the Syrian civil war. Apart from his own works, Dost has translated Kurdish and Persian works into Arabic, including Mem and Zin, a classical Kurdish love story, written by Ahmad Khani in the 17th century and considered as the national epic of the Kurdish people.
His literary contributions span various genres, including poetry, novels, and translations. Some of his works have been translated into Italian, Turkish, Persian and Spanish. Since 2000, Dost has lived in exile in Germany, acquiring German citizenship in 2008.

Life and career

Dost was born in 1965 in Kobanî, a mostly Kurdish city in northern Syria. From 1985 to 1988 he studied natural sciences in Aleppo, but abandoned his academic education after three years, focusing on literature and writing. He wrote his early epic poem Kela Dimdimê in 1984, which was only published in Kurdish in Germany in 1991.
Among other translations, Dost translated his own Kurdish novel Mîrname, set during the Ottoman Empire in the 17th century, into Arabic. The work is a fictitious biography of Ahmad Khani, a major Kurdish poet and Sufi, who fought "injustice using only a pen and ink." In February 2024, his novel Safe Corridor, translated by Marilyn Booth, was awarded the first-ever Bait Al-Ghasham Dar Arab Translation Prize, an international award for the translation of Arabic literature into English. This story takes place during the 2018 Turkish occupation of Afrin. In another novel, A Green Bus Leaves Aleppo, Dost used the same plot, but told from a different character’s perspective.
In a 2022 interview with literary critic Nuha Askar about the relationship of his literary work and Kurdish national identity, Dost said:
Further, he considered that "the Syrian novel has become essentially a war novel," with several of his own works dealing with the fighting and destruction in the Kurdish regions of Afrin, Kobani and Amuda. Asked about his relationship with the Arabic language, he explained that he started writing in this language at a young age and considers it his own language, just as other writers of Arabic literature. Having grown up with Kurdish as his native language and Arabic through his cultural environment, he considers himself bilingual, speaking and thinking equally well in both languages. His own translations of earlier novels written in Arabic into Kurdish are based on his decision to publish all of his literary work in his "marginalized national language".

Works

Novels

  • Mijabad. Kurdish. Diyarbakir 2004
  • Sê gav û sê darek. Kurdish. Avesta, Istanbul 2007
  • Mîrname. Kurdish. Avesta, Istanbul 2008
  • Martînê Bextewer. Kurdish. Avesta, Istanbul 2011
  • Asheeq the Translator Arabic. Waraq Publishing, Dubai 2013
  • Blood on the Minaret Arabic. Maqam, Kairo 2013
  • The Bells of Rome Arabic. Dar Al-Saqi, Beirut 2017
  • Kobani: The Tragedy and the Quarter. Kurdish. Dara, Diyarbakir 2017
  • Safe Corridor Arabic. Miskiliani, Tunis 2019, English translation 2024
  • A Green Bus leaving Aleppo. Arabic. Al Mutawaset, Milano 2019
  • The manuscript of Petersburg. Arabic. Miskiliani, Tunis 2020
  • Cordyceps. Arabic. Damascus. 2020
  • In the Grip of a Nightmare – Diary of the Corona Siege: Narratives about the Virus. Arabic. Amman 2021
  • Safe Corridor. English translation by Marilyn Booth, Dar al Arab, London, 2025

Translations

  • Mem and Zin. Damascus 1995. Duhok 2016. Kairo 2016

Poetry

  • Dîwana Jan. Avesta, Istanbul 2008
  • Kela Dimdimê. Bonn 1991; Istanbul 2008
  • Sazek ji çavên Kurdistan re '. Kurdish. Syria 1996
  • Poems which the War has Forgotten in the Poet's Pocket. Arabic. Amman. 2019

Awards

  • first prize in a Kurdish short story competition in Syria
  • the Kurdish Galawej Award, a poetry award for Kurdish literature.
  • Bait Al-Ghasham Dar Arab Translation Prize for ''Safe Corridor''

Literature

  • Askar, Nuha.. The Out-of-Flock Dissident: An Interview with Kurdish – Syrian Writer Jan Dost. Review of Middle East Studies. 56:403-409.