Sages of Darkness

Salim Barakat, one of the world’s most innovative writers in Arabic, and one of the greatest of all Kurdish authors, was born in al-Qamishli, Syria, in 1951. His first poem, Niqābat al-Ansāb (‘Lineage’), was published in 1971. Since then, he has progressed beyond the dream of creating a distinctly Kurdish literature and entered into the mainstream of modernistic literature.Aviva Butt, born in New York City, obtained a BA and an MA from the University of Sydney. On a postgraduate grant, she visited Shmuel Moreh, Iraqi-born Arabic professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Working with Moreh and subsequently with Reuven Snir of Haifa University, she immersed herself in literary criticism and Middle Eastern culture. In 2017, already an experienced translator, she published the first English translations of Salim Barakat’s poems. This led to her 2021 monograph, Salim Barakat, Mahmud Darwish, and the Kurdish and Palestinian Similitude: Qamishli Extended.

• Introduction – Sages of Darkness – Chapter 1 – Chapter 2 – Chapter 3 – Chapter 4 – Chapter 5 – Dramatis Personae.