Lady of the Birds
Bachtyar Ali’s sixth book to be published in German
NEWSROOM – The German edition of “The Palace of Sad Birds,” a novel by Kurdish author Bachtyar Ali, will be released on Aug. 19, 2024. Titled “Die Herrin der Vögel” (Lady of the Birds) in German, it is his sixth book to be translated into German. The novel was translated by Rawezh Salim and Ute Cantera-Lang and will be published by Unions Verlag.
Salim, one of the translators, told 964media that the translation took about a year and a half to complete.
Salim explained the reason for the title change in the German version: “Changing a novel’s title during translation into another language is normal. It’s not necessary to keep the original title. The new title reflects the protagonist, Sawsan Fikrat Guldanchi, who is described in the novel as the ‘lady of the birds.'”
The protagonist, Sawsan, is known for her intelligence and unique worldview, shaped by her father’s library filled with books, atlases, and encyclopedias. She spends her time reading, discovering the diversity of the world beyond her city.
She has three suitors: Kamaran Selma, an urban thug; Mansur Asrin, a scholarly educated man; and Khalid Amun, a businessperson close to state politics. Each represents a different class of Kurdish society at the time.
Sawsan insists she will only marry a man with a “cosmopolitan spirit” and a love of stories. Early in the story, Kamaran confronts Mansur but does not kill him, while Khalid quickly proposes marriage. The differing interests of the three men drive the novel’s events as each goes to great lengths to win Sawsan’s love. She challenges them to travel the world for eight years and return with one hundred birds.
Previously, four of Ali’s novels, along with a collection of essays, have been published in German. These include “The Last Pomegranate Tree,” “City of White Musicians,” “Parwana Evening,” “My Uncle, Jamshid Khan,” and “The Dictator’s Smile.”
Salim emphasized that the original content of the novel was preserved in the German version: “The book has been published in German exactly as it was written in Kurdish, with no changes, abridgements, or omissions.”
Ali, born 1960 in Sulaymaniyah, is has risen to prominence in the German-speaking literary world, having received the Nelly Sachs Prize and the Hilde Domin Prize. He has been living in Germany since the mid-1990s. Ali is one of the most significant contemporary Kurdish writers, renowned for his deep and critical engagement with Kurdish society and culture, which has played a pivotal role in shaping modern Kurdish literature.