Kader Abdolah


Hossein Sadjadi Ghaemmaghami Farahani, better known by his pen name Kader Abdolah, is an Iranian-Dutch writer, poet and columnist. His books, written in Dutch, often contain Persian literary themes. He regularly appears on Dutch television as well.

Life

Kader Abdolah is one of the descendants of Mirza Abu'l-Qasem Qa'em-Maqam, the Iranian politician during the Qajar period who was also affiliated with art and literature.
Kader Abdolah had long wished to become an author. He used his political passion to begin his career after the Islamic revolution in 1979 by writing articles in the leftist political newspapers.
In the 1980s, he wrote two novels which were published illegally because of the political constraints: What are the Kurds saying? and Kurdistan after the resistance party.
When he immigrated to the Netherlands, he felt as if political issues were no longer relevant to his life and he fell into a state of depression because he had thought of political activities as the essence of his life. Learning Dutch and to write in the language is therefore described by him as a political tool for fighting. Literature had turned into the incentive for a new fight.

Career

Kader Abdolah studied physics in Arak College of Science in Arak, Iran, and graduated in 1977. After graduation he served his mandatory military service in the Iranian Navy in Bandar Pahlavi. During the revolution, he joined the left-wing movement opposing the Shah—and later the Khomeini—regimes. He fled to the Netherlands as a political refugee in 1988. In 2006, he was writer in residence at Leiden University. Today he lives in Delft, writing under a pseudonym composed of the names of two executed friends.
Het huis van de moskee catapulted Abdolah onto the Dutch bestseller lists. In 2007 it was voted second best Dutch novel ever in the Netherlands in an online survey organized by NRC Handelsblad and NPS. The English translation was released worldwide in January 2010.

Works/Publications

  • 1993 – De adelaars
  • 1995 – De meisjes en de partizanen
  • 1997 – De reis van de lege flessen
  • 1998 – Is dit mijn recht, mijn lief?
  • 1998 – Buitenspiegels: verhalen over Nederland
  • 1998 – Mirza
  • 1998 – Short Shorties
  • 1999 – Les jeunes filles et les partisans
  • 2001 – De koffer
  • 2001 – Een tuin in zee
  • 2001 – Andere ogen: Een frisse blik op
  • 2002 – Kélilé en Demné
  • 2002 – Sophia's droë vrugte
  • 2003 – Portretten en een oude droom
  • 2003 – Karavaan
  • 2005 - The [House of the Mosque|Het huis van de moskee (The House of the Mosque)]
  • 2006 – II viaggio delle botiglie vuote
  • 2007 – Voetstappen
  • 2008 – De boodschapper: een vertelling / de Koran: een vertaling. A two volume set: De boodschapper: een vertelling about the life of the prophet Muhammad, and de Koran: een vertaling, Abdolah's Dutch translation of the Qur'an
  • 2008 – Das Haus an der Moschee
  • 2010 – Mohammad, der Prophet
  • 2011 – De koning
  • 2011 – De kraai
  • 2012 – IL re
  • 2012 – How Europe is changing
  • 2014 – Papegaai vloog over de IJssel
  • 2016 – Messenger, The: A Tale Retold
  • 2016 – Salam Europa!
  • 2016 – Qur'an the
  • 2018 – Het pad van de gele slippers
  • 2020 – The House of the Mosque
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Honours and awards