The cover of the English edition of Bachtyar Ali’s The Last Pomegranate Tree
Eighth foreign translation
Bachtyar Ali’s ‘The Last Pomegranate Tree’ to be published in Russian
NEWSROOM — “The Last Pomegranate Tree,” a novel by celebrated Kurdish writer Bachtyar Ali, will be released in Russian, marking its eighth translation into a foreign language.
Ali announced on his Facebook page that an agreement has been signed with the Russian publishing house Polyandria in St. Petersburg to publish the novel in Russian.
The book, originally written in Sorani Kurdish and first published in 2002, has already been translated into Arabic, Persian, Turkish, English, German, Italian, and French. It was recently recognized among the top 100 books of the 21st century by the Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung.
The novel tells the story of Muzafari Subhdam, a Kurdish peshmerga fighter who, after spending 21 years in solitary confinement in the desert, embarks on a quest to find his son, Saryas. His journey takes an unexpected twist when he discovers that three individuals share the same name. Blending elements of magical realism, the narrative unfolds primarily in the Kurdistan Region in the aftermath of Saddam Hussein’s fall and during the Kurdish civil war.