Last Pomegranate Tree

Whenever he told a lie, something strange would happen. So begins 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. An inlet to the recesses of a terrifying historical moment, and a philosophical journey of formidable depths, the book interrogates the origins and reverberations of atrocity. It also probes, with a graceful intelligence, unforgettable acts of mercy.

Muzafar-i Subhdam, a peshmerga fighter, has spent the last twenty-one years imprisoned in a desert yearning for his son, Saryas, who was only a few days old when Muzafar was captured. Upon his release, Muzafar begins a frantic search, only to learn that Saryas was one of three identical boys who became enmeshed in each other's lives as war mutilated the region.

Bachtyar Ali was born in the city of Sulaimaniyah in Iraqi Kurdistan. He has been living in Germany for over two decades. A prominent Kurdish intellectual, Ali has written 40 books, including 12 novels, as well as a number of essay books and collections of poetry. His novels have become instant bestsellers in both Iraq and Iran. The Last Pomegranate Tree sold over 25,000 copies in German. In 2024, it featured on the list of the 100 best books of the 21st century in the respectable German-language Swiss newspaper NZZ. It was also finalist in the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) prize in 2024. His novels have been translated into Persian, Arabic, Turkish, German, Italian, French and English, a renown very few authors writing in the Kurdish language enjoy. In 2017, he was awarded the Nelly Sachs Prize in Germany, joining past recipients such as Milan Kundera, Margaret Atwood and Javier Marías. He is the first author writing in a non-European language to do so. In 2024, he was honoured with the prestigious German award Hilde Domin Prize for literature in exile.

Kareem Abdulrahman is a translator and Kurdish affairs analyst. From 2006 to 2014, he worked as a Kurdish media and political analyst for the BBC, where translation was part of his job. In 2013, he was awarded a place in the British Centre for Literary Translation’s prestigious mentorship programme. He translated Bachtyar Ali’s I Stared at the Night of the City into English (UK; Periscope; 2016), making it the first Kurdish novel to be translated into English. He is also the Head of Editorial at Insight Iraq, a political analysis service focusing on Iraq and Kurdish affairs. He lives in London.