Event Highlights: A Reading & Conversation with Bachtyar Ali
Margaret Litvin of Boston University’s Department of World Languages & Literatures, leads a conversation with Kurdish novelist Bachtyar Ali and his English language translator Kareem Abdulrahman. This event, which took place at BU’s Pardee School of Global Studies on Monday, October 2, 2023, celebrates the recent publication by Archipelago Books of Ali’s The Last Pomegranate Tree – “a phantasmagoric warren of fact, fabrication, and mystical allegory, set in the aftermath of Saddam Hussein’s rule and Iraq’s Kurdish conflict” – in English translation by Abdulrahman.
Bachtyar Ali is one of the most prominent contemporary authors and poets from Iraqi Kurdistan. Kareem Abdulrahman is a translator and Kurdish affairs analyst.
This event was sponsored by the Boston University Arts Initiative, the Department of World Languages & Literatures; the Center on Culture, Religion & World Affairs: CURA; the NEH Distinguished Teaching Professorship; the Center for the Humanities, and the literary journal AGNI.