Salim Barakat


Salim Barakat 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

He wrote about Kurdish culture, as well as Arab, Assyrian, Armenian, Circassian and Yazidi culture. His earliest major prose work, Al-Jundub al-Hadidi, 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 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.

Novels

The Sages of Darkness Geometric Spirits The Feathers The Camps of Infinity The Astrologers on the Tuesday of Death: Crossing of the Flamingo The Astrologers on the Tuesday of Death: Cosmos The Astrologers on the Tuesday of Death: The Liver of Milaeus Debris of the Second Eternity Seals and Nebula Delshad The Caves of Haydrahodahose Thadrimis Novice Dead The Sand Ladders The Anguish of Indescribable Perplexing Intimacy in the Voice of Sarmak The Agitation of Geese Crushed Hoofs in Haydrahodahose Vacant Sky Over Jerusalem Vacant Sky Over Jerusalem, Part II The Mermaid and her Daughters Prisoners of Mount Ayayanu East Regions of the Djinn The Captives of Sinjar The Roaring of Shadows in Zenobia's Gardens A Biography of Existence and a Brief History of Resurrection What about the Jewish lady Rachel? Encyclopedia of Perfection without Distortion: The Genesis of Minerals Medusa does not comb her hair The Snow is more treacherous in the Spruce Forests Those Little Girls and their Paper Bags The Eleven Delights of Suicide and The Measure of Deceits in the Spiritual States of Jalaluddin Rumi Heads and Spices Hiring Ghosts

Poetry

Each Newcomer Shall Hail Me, So Shall Each Outgoer Thus Do I Disperse Moussissana For the Dust, for Shamdin, for Cycles of Prey and Cycles of Kingdoms The Throngs The Cranes By the Very Traps, by the Very Foxes Leading the Wind The Falconer Recklessness of the Ruby Confrontations, Covenants, Threshing Floors, Adversities, etc. Hefts Lexicon The People of Three O'clock at Dawn on the Third Thursday Translating Basalt The Flood The Haughtiness of Homogeneity Gods The North of Hearts or their West Syria The Great Poem of Love All the doors Alerting the Animal to its Ancestry The Spoils of the Athletes and the Teachings they adhere to The Five Hundred Shrapnels Spiritual Denunciation A Battle in the Water Time Zone Provoking Thunder

Autobiographies

Church of the Warrior The Iron Grasshopper Play High the Trumpet, Play It the Highest

Collections

Diwan Pharmacopoeia Poetical Works Expediting the Loans of Prose Poetical Works 2 Agony as Mathematics, Yearning as Geometry Inciting Meanings Against their Origins and Escalating Calls for Prose Rights

Children's books

Narjis Who Guards the Earth? Sleep