Translated by Ahmadi Mala
Bachtyar Ali’s Occupation of Darkness to be published in French
NEWSROOM– Occupation of Darkness, a novel by the renowned Kurdish author Bachtyar Ali, is set to be published in French.
The translation has been undertaken by the writer Ahmadi Mala, who spent about a year translating the novel into French. Mala, who also spoke with 964media, emphasized the novel’s compelling subject matter, which intertwines the Kurdish language’s political history over the past century with Turkey’s establishment and its policies toward Kurds, their language, culture, and attire.
He believes this aspect will attract the French readership, considering the topic as one that can even be classified under the genocide discourse.
Gérard Chaliand, a prominent French sociologist and writer, is preparing a foreword for the book to be published by publishing house Éditions Les Belles Lettres.
This marks the second of Bachtyar Ali’s novels to be translated into French, following the publication of The Last Pomegranate Tree. Mala suggests that French readers might be among the most informed European audiences regarding Kurdish issues and literature, given the extensive body of work on the Middle East available in French, dating back to the 19th century and significantly expanding over the last fifty years.
Occupation of Darkness is Bachtyar Ali’s tenth novel and has previously been translated into Persian and Arabic.
In a reflective note on the historical context, Ali emphasized the prolonged suppression of Kurds and the Kurdish language in Turkey. He remarked, “Isn’t it strange that a nation has been officially banned from its language and existence for more than 70 years, but has not written much about that history?”
“The fact that we have not written anything great about the history of silencing the Kurdish people has always been a great moral and spiritual burden on my shoulders. I lived with it a lot before writing the novel and prepared for many years,” Ali continued.
Ali described the text as an act of resistance against forgetting, an exploration of the self through the lens of colonial narratives, and a pursuit to comprehend the occupying other.
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