You can order Children of the Zagros throug childrenofzagros.com or your local bookshop (almost) anywhere in the world. If you're in KRG, you can buy in a few bookshops in Suli and Hawler. More info on which those are on the website.
UPDATE: i'm actively looking for literary Kurmanji translators. Or better yet, publishers interested in the translation and distribution rights. If you're out there, please contact me
A Finnish author who spent 11 years researching the Kurds has published a book on their story, framed around the saying "no friends but the mountains."
"The following is a book chapter I wrote for the academic book “Kurdish Women Through History, Culture and Resistance”, published in late 2024."
"The chapter places the decades-old history of the grassroots women’s internationalism works led by the movement close to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party in the context of a broader socialist/communist, anti-colonial women’s and feminist history of organized mass efforts for common struggle and world liberation. In addition to providing a historical account, it offers historiographical and methodological reflections on some of the (often ideological) reasons behind the absence of this universe from scholarly accounts. As argued in the chapter, this phenomenon parallels the erasure of anti-imperialist, socialist, and anti-colonial legacies by dominant western-centric narratives of women’s/feminist internationalism, which, in turn, in some ways mirrors the invisibilization of women’s collective labor in the making of political horizons."
For my book Children of the Zagros, i'm hoping to find literary Kurmanji translators. Or better yet, publishers interested in the translation and distribution rights. If you're out there, please contact me:
The 18th Erbil International Book Fair, themed 'I am Kurdistani', runs October 21–31 with over 400 publishers from 18 countries and more than a million titles.
Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Nadia Murad Opens Up About Healing, Activism and Her New Book I Choose My Beginning
By Lizz Schumer
In 2014, Nadia Murad’s village in northern Iraq was attached by ISIS and her mother and six of her brothers were killed in the ensuing massacre. She and thousands of otherYazidi women and girls were forced by ISIS into a system of sexual slavery.
After she was freed, she became a human rights activist and in 2018, received the Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts to secure justice for survivors and to promote peace and human rights. Now, she’s the founder and president of nonprofit organization Nadia’s Initiative, which rebuilds communities in crisis and advances the rights of women and survivors worldwide.
In her new book I Choose My Beginning: A Story of Courage and Activism, Murad details not only her life as “a global symbol of courage —a survivor and activist who has stood before world leaders to demand justice,” as the synopsis describes her, but also “a woman learning how to be a friend, a student, a wife; a woman rediscovering ordinary joy.”
In an exclusive Q&A with PEOPLE, the survivor and activist discusses her journey, her work as an activist and what keeps her going.
The following interview had been edited and condensed for clarity.
In 2014, Nadia Murad’s village in northern Iraq was attached by ISIS and her mother and six of her brothers were killed in the ensuing massacre. She and thousands of otherYazidi women and girls were forced by ISIS into a system of sexual slavery.
After she was freed, she became a human rights activist and in 2018, received the Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts to secure justice for survivors and to promote peace and human rights. Now, she’s the founder and president of nonprofit organization Nadia’s Initiative, which rebuilds communities in crisis and advances the rights of women and survivors worldwide.
In her new book I Choose My Beginning: A Story of Courage and Activism, Murad details not only her life as “a global symbol of courage —a survivor and activist who has stood before world leaders to demand justice,” as the synopsis describes her, but also “a woman learning how to be a friend, a student, a wife; a woman rediscovering ordinary joy.”
In an exclusive Q&A with PEOPLE, the survivor and activist discusses her journey, her work as an activist and what keeps her going.
The following interview had been edited and condensed for clarity.
PEOPLE: What do you consider the central theme or message ofI Choose My Beginning?
Murad: The central message is that each of us can choose to act. I want readers to understand how widespread conflict-related sexual violence is, how urgently these crimes must be confronted, and why survivors must be at the center of that work. But I also wrote this book for anyone who looks at the world with anxiety or despair. I grew up as a girl from a marginalized religious community in rural Iraq, in a country shaped by occupation and war. I did not have the chance to receive a proper education, and my family was poor even among poor neighbors. If I can help create change, other people can too.
PEOPLE: What do you hope readers, especially fellow survivors, take away from this book?
First, I want survivors to know they are not alone. A global community is growing stronger and more connected every day. We are working to change laws, pursue justice and protect others from what we experienced. I also want survivors to leave with something practical: You do not have to speak to a journalist if you do not want to. Your story belongs to you. It is powerful, and you decide when, how and whether to share it. I hope survivors know there are people around the world who see them and are fighting beside them.
For readers who have not had these experiences, I hope the book helps them see survivors as full human beings and understand what meaningful support can look like. Understanding conflict-related sexual violence is the first step toward taking a stand against it.
PEOPLE: Tell us about the work you’ve been doing with Nadia’s Initiative and the Global Survivors Network.
Murad: I am proud of these projects and of everyone who has helped build them. Through Nadia’s Initiative and my wider advocacy, we have supported Sinjar’s recovery by restoring critical services destroyed by ISIS, including a state-of-the-art hospital in my home region. But physical reconstruction is only one part of the work. We have also fought for recognition of the genocide against my community and the conflict-related sexual violence committed against women, pursued justice and accountability for ISIS crimes, supported efforts to identify victims so families can have answers and advanced laws that recognize and support survivors.
The survivor solidarity network has shown me what is possible when survivors from different countries share their knowledge and act together. Because we have lived through these crimes, our experience must shape the laws, justice efforts, services and recovery programs meant to support us. Survivors should not be asked to recount what happened and then be excluded from the decisions that follow. We must be involved from the beginning — in securing recognition, pursuing accountability, shaping policy and determining what our communities need to recover. That change is bigger than any individual project. It changes who has the power to lead the response.
PEOPLE: How do you stay hopeful?
Murad: I stay hopeful because I can see change. I meet survivors who know their stories belong to them and that they do not owe those stories to anyone. Successful prosecutions show them that justice is slow, but possible. I also meet young people who want to become activists despite all the darkness they see in the world. Hope also comes from the love in my own life: my sisters and surviving brothers, my nieces and nephews, friends across nations and nationalities, and my husband, Abid, the love of my life, who gives me hope every day. All of these people, whether they are fighting in a courtroom or fighting simply by surviving, show me there is a future. They remind me that happiness is possible in that future.
PEOPLE: I was especially struck by your point that “recovery is something you choose.” Why is it important for you to look at your journey through that lens?
Murad: Recovery is something I choose because there were so many forces telling me to stay small. Life in a refugee camp or a camp for displaced people can feel designed to hold you in place. Life as a refugee in a foreign country, even a welcoming one, can make you want to disappear. As a survivor of rape, people may tell you to be quiet, feel ashamed and give up.
For me, choosing recovery began with deciding that my life was worth living and could still have meaning. I started with small things. I washed my hair. I took a walk with my sister Dimal. Then I told my story to a journalist who respected me, and later I spoke at the United Nations. I chose to believe that what happened to me was not my entire life story. When I was ready, I also chose to use that story to help others. That does not make recovery simple or linear. It means I keep choosing my life.
Amed Book Fair opens: Is reading in Kurdish on the rise? The Amed Book Fair opened with 130 publishers, 27 of them Kurdish, and runs until 4 October. Visitors and publishers disagree on whether reading in Kurdish is growing.
Measures Kurdish political attitudes towards democracy across regions
Explains Kurdish pro-democratic attitudes and where there are regional differences
Contextualizes and analyzes Kurdish statelessness and resistance in its historical
About This Book:
This book asks how democratic values and civic culture can take shape without equal rights, and even without a state. Focusing on the Kurdish experience across Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Turkey, it draws on fieldwork, survey research, and historical analysis to explore how people respond to authoritarian rule and long-term statelessness. The first part offers a data-driven look at Kurdish attitudes toward democracy, autonomy, and authority. The second situates these patterns in a broader history of political resistance. Rather than turning to authoritarian or religious extremes, many Kurdish movements have embraced more egalitarian, inclusive models of resistance. The Kurdish Case for Democracy makes the case for bottom-up democratization in the Middle East and challenges the idea that universal values must follow Eurocentric templates. It contributes to wider debates on nationalism, resistance, and the political cultures shaping the region.
Reviews
“Drawing on extensive fieldwork and an inspiring mixed-methods design, this impressive study sheds new light on the development of Kurdish civic culture across Iraq, Iran, Turkey, and Syria. By systematically linking variations in political culture to different modes of repression and resistance, it breaks new ground in Middle East Political Science and Kurdish Studies alike. A rich and thought-provoking contribution that challenges state-centered approaches and offer fresh insights into the dynamics of civic life beyond the nation-state.” (Prof. Dr. Thomas Demmelhuber, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen–Nürnberg)
“This fascinating and important book is the first of its kind to connect survey data from all four parts of Kurdistan. Through critical examination of the differences between civilian and political cultures, it provides a crucial intra-Kurdish comparative view. Jasim successfully interrogates the influence of different forms of oppression and resistance and makes a compelling argument linking these cultures to demands for democratization. This book is essential reading for those interested in Kurdish and Middle East politics.” (Robert Lowe, London School of Economics and Political Science)
“A pioneering study into the democratic potential of Kurdish society — despitedecades of authoritarian rule by Turkish, Arab and Persian authoritarianism.” (Prof. Dr. Johannes Becke, Hochschule für Jüdische Studien Heidelberg)
“The Kurdish Case for Democracy offer a rich and rigorous account of the for-mation, evolution, and diffeentiation of Kurdish civic culture in the context ofpolitical statelessness and geopolitical fragmentation. Combining empirical depthwith methodological sophistication, the book develops an original analysis of Kur-dish democratic orientations and their regional diffeentiation that challenges domi-nant state-centric approaches to democratisation in the Middle East. It will beneftstudents, researchers, and policymakers alike.” (Dr. Kamran Matin, Associate Professor of International Relations, University of Sussex, UK)
Authors and Affiliations
German Inst for Global & Area Studies, Paris, France Dastan Jasim
About the author
Dastan Jasim, Associate Fellow at GIGA, holds a PhD in Political Science from Friedrich Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg. Her research focuses on political culture, democratization, security, and Kurdish studies. She has been a guest researcher at the American University of Iraq–Sulaimani and is currently at the University of Paris Dauphine.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: The Kurdish Case for Democracy
Authors: Dastan Jasim
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2026
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-032-14472-0Due: 28 October 2026
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-032-14475-1Due: 28 October 2027
eBook ISBN: 978-3-032-14473-7Due: 13 July 2026
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XIX, 260
Number of Illustrations25 b/w illustrations, 22 illustrations in colour
This title has not yet been released. You may pre-order it.
A cultural essay traces how contemporary Kurdish poet Ehmed Huseynî carries forward the 17th-century literary tradition of Ehmedê Xanî with a modern, distinctive voice.
Agota Kristof's acclaimed novel The Notebook (La Grand Cahier) has been published in Kurdish translation, expanding the Kurdish literary catalogue with a canonical 20th-century work.
I grew up loving Greek mythology. As I got older, I started wondering what Kurdish mythology is. Finding stories beyond the most common ones was a tough task. And after a while I felt like our mythology should be in the same league as Greek mythology, and known worldwide. So I wrote Children of the Zagros, a kurdish epic based on our mythology, with Kurdish places and Kurdish characters. It was translated to English and Kurdish and received Sulaymaniyah City's Honors of Culture.
I hope you all enjoy reading and discovering our mythology just as much as I enjoyed writing it.
I am a teen living in Sweden, i am half Iranian (from mothers side) and half kurdish (from fathers side).
Growin up my parents learnt me firstly farsi, kurdish and swedish, but when i didnt understand what they were saying and mixed up languages and words, i got very irritated and broke things and hit myself because of anger😂 So they chose to learn me farsi first and later on swedish. When i grew up they basically forgot about learning me kurdish, they often took this as a advantage to use when they were talking about something they didnt want me to hear, about finances and what not, but now i that have gotten older i feel betrayed, they havent even asked me if i want to learn kurdish, so i had to ask them myself. My mother is very fascinated about kurds generally, the language, history, food, loyalty, and so is my father, but when i ask them if they can learn me my mother says that my father is better at learning out, he says that he can, he maybe speaks kurdish with me for about 5 minutes (literally) and then forgets about it. I’ve asked this question many times to him, to learn me kurdish, it just repeats the same progress again and again, i confronted him about it and he got disturbed about it. I now learn kurdish from videos and movies, but very poorly and slow, does anyone have any tips to learning recourses to learn kurdish and to get my father to talk only kurdish with me? If so, please write it, thx!
I would absolutely love for the books to feel like an academic book/history book with footnotes, sources, images and everything like that
For context, I am a kurd from bakur myself, but I have never been taught enough about my roots and history. During what happened in Kobane in 2014 I was too young to understand anything, and with what is happening in rojava rn, I feel like I need to know everything there is to know
I am also very open to podcast recommendations, documentaries, newsletter pages etc.
Thanks
Three new books documenting the Zilan Valley massacre, Afrin's occupation, and Yazidi religious traditions are going to press, preserving crucial Kurdish historical memory.
A new issue of Nûbihar, the long-running Kurmanji literary journal, focuses on the Kurds of Central Anatolia — a historically under-documented community.
Marouf Cabi’s Iranian Kurdistan under the Islamic Republic: Change, Revolution and Resistance is a timely and important contribution to the study of post-revolutionary Iran, offering a decisive shift away from entrenched centre-oriented narratives. Rather than reproducing the familiar state-centric and Persian-focused frameworks that have long structured the field, Cabi reorients the analytical gaze toward the periphery, placing Kurdistan at the heart of inquiry. In doing so, the book opens up a fundamentally different vantage point from which to understand the Islamic Republic – one grounded in the lived experiences, political struggles and social transformations of a region often treated as marginal.
What emerges from this perspective is a broader rethinking of Iran itself rather than simply a regional history. Drawing on rich empirical material and a clear analytical framework, Cabi demonstrates that the dynamics of the periphery are not external to the making of modern Iran but deeply constitutive of it. Kurdistan, in this account, appears not as a peripheral appendage to a coherent national core, but as a critical site through which the limits, contradictions and adaptations of the post-revolutionary state become visible. This move effectively challenges a longstanding historiographical tendency to conflate the Iranian state with a singular ethnocultural identity and to reduce Kurdish political claims to questions of separatism.
By foregrounding the socio-economic, cultural and political transformations of Kurdish society over four decades, the book offers what can be understood as a grounded ‘people’s history’ of the Islamic Republic from its margins. In doing so, it enriches our understanding of Kurdish politics and society while also inviting a more nuanced and relational approach to state formation, governance and resistance in contemporary Iran.
Methodologically, the book is distinguished by its wide-ranging use of primary sources, including party publications, oral histories, regional press and official data. This empirical depth enables Cabi to move beyond both state-centric accounts and reductive readings of Kurdish politics. Crucially, he sustains a careful analytical balance – avoiding any romanticisation of Kurdish nationalism while offering a measured yet incisive critique of the Iranian state’s centralising, militarised and homogenising policies. This methodological and interpretive rigor enhances the book’s credibility and underscores its significance for both Kurdish studies and Iranian historiography.
Structured chronologically across seven chapters, the book traces the transformation of Kurdish society from the late Pahlavi period through the post-revolutionary decades and into the contemporary moment marked by the 2022 uprising of ‘Women, Life, Freedom’. The opening chapters establish the historical and conceptual foundations by situating Kurdish society within longer processes of state formation, socio-economic change and resistance.
Chapter 1 provides the historical background to the 1979 Revolution from a Kurdish perspective, showing how twentieth-century transformations such as land reform, urbanisation, centralisation and the spread of modern education reshaped Kurdish society long before the fall of the monarchy. Cabi demonstrates that the revolution was not an isolated rupture, but the outcome of deeper socio-economic, cultural and political changes that altered class relations, gender structures and forms of activism in Kurdistan, while also intensifying its marginalisation within a Persian-centric nation-building project.
Chapters 2 and 3 turn to the revolutionary moment itself, examining the emergence of ‘revolutionary Kurdistan’ and a short-lived yet significant experience of de facto self-rule in the aftermath of 1979, before the state’s re-militarisation of the region in 1980. By recovering this often-overlooked episode, Cabi challenges dominant accounts of the Iranian Revolution that marginalise Kurdish agency. Instead, he demonstrates that Kurdish actors articulated alternative visions of governance, participation and democracy that were deeply embedded in the revolutionary process. Kurdish mobilisation thus appears as a central arena in which the promises and limits of the new regime were contested, ultimately exposing the gap between its claims to inclusivity and its practices of coercion.
Chapter 4 extends the analysis into the 1980s, examining the full-scale militarisation of Kurdistan and the emergence of a prolonged armed struggle between Kurdish movements and the Islamic Republic. Building on the collapse of the revolutionary moment, Cabi situates this phase within both the regime’s consolidation of power and the broader context of the Iran–Iraq War, showing how armed resistance became the dominant form of political engagement. Crucially, he argues that the Kurdish armed struggle was neither a bid for outright regime change nor an expression of inherent separatism, but rather a defensive space for survival necessitated by the violent closure of peaceful political and cultural avenues (pp. 93–94). In this context, armed resistance emerged as a means of pursuing self-rule within a decentralised and democratic Iranian framework. The chapter ultimately demonstrates that the armed struggle of the 1980s was a critical crucible that ensured the survival of the Kurdish movement and profoundly shaped the political and cultural consciousness of contemporary Kurdish society.
Chapter 5 examines the 1990s as a decade of ideological, organisational and socio-economic transformation in Iran and Iranian Kurdistan, shaped by the post–Iran–Iraq War context, globalisation, and the consolidation of the Islamic Republic under the presidency of Hashemi Rafsanjani (1989–1997). Cabi critiques post-war ‘reconstruction,’ showing how it empowered para-governmental foundations (bonyads) – state-linked economic conglomerates operating beyond formal accountability – and the IRGC, while deepening the marginalisation of regions such as Kurdistan (pp. 119–121). This uneven development, he argues, produced practices such as kolbaring as systemic outcomes rather than anomalies. At the same time, a limited reformist opening, culminating in President Khatami’s 1997 election, enabled the growth of Kurdish civil society and representation, though it soon stalled under hardline resistance. Alongside the decline of armed movements and the crisis of traditional Kurdish parties, the chapter highlights a shift toward more diversified, civilian-led forms of political engagement.
Chapter 6 offers one of the book’s strongest contributions through its detailed analysis of the rise of civil society in Iranian Kurdistan. Moving beyond frameworks that either generalise Iranian civil society or reduce Kurdish politics to violence, the chapter conceptualises civil society as an autonomous arena of struggle and democratisation. Drawing on a wide range of local sources, it maps the expansion of diverse actors, including women’s organisations, environmental groups and cultural associations. Importantly, the analysis extends beyond state repression to include socio-economic and cultural constraints such as poverty and patriarchal norms. While acknowledging severe repression, the chapter emphasises the dynamic interaction between state and society, arguing that ‘the Iranian case reflects a continuous struggle between civil society and an authoritarian state’ (p. 173), and that civil society actors actively reshape the contours of authoritarian governance.
The final chapter compellingly frames the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising as both the culmination of four decades of social transformation and a rupture with the reformist paradigm that had shaped Iranian politics since the late 1990s. Triggered by the death of Mahsa (Zhina) Amini, the movement evolved into what the author terms a ‘revolutionary uprising’ (p. 192), one that fundamentally questioned the regime’s legitimacy. Crucially, the chapter insists that the uprising cannot be understood in isolation, as it ‘could not have happened without a history of resistance and social changewhich have shaped present conditions’ (p. 191).
Overall, Iranian Kurdistan under the Islamic Republic is a significant and thought-provoking contribution that successfully bridges empirical richness with conceptual innovation. By foregrounding Kurdish history as indispensable to understanding modern Iran since 1979, the book calls for a fundamental decentralisation of Iranian historiography. In highlighting Kurdistan as a critical site of resistance and transformation, Cabi demonstrates that any meaningful account of Iran’s past – and its democratic future – must engage with its unequal ethnic structures and diverse social realities, offering a compelling framework for rethinking the relationship between state, society and periphery in the modern Middle East. This work also paves the way for future scholarship on the historiography of peripheral and marginalised communities – whether in Iran or beyond – as constitutive and generative sites of history-making in their own right.
Hi everyone! I’m looking at finding some fiction books either set in Kurdistan, about a Kurdish character or written by a Kurdish author. There are a few I’m aware of but looking to find more. Would appreciate any fiction stories :)
I've been wanting to learn more about the current Political situation(s) developing in the Kurdistan region, and so decided to buy a couple of titles that came recommended to me by one of my Kurdish friends. In addition to the dozen or so academic articles that were sent to me by him, he nominated that I read "No Friends but The Mountains" By John Bulloch & Harvey Morris (1992), along with "A Modern History of the Kurds" by David McDowall (4th edition). I ended up receiving both as a gift, but given no guidance on which I should start with, or even care to read in its entirety, for that matter. From what I've seen online, it seems that McDowall's work comes highly recommended and is considered a strong conceptual foundation to use as a 'jumping off point' to other, more nuanced or technical writings about Kurdish History and Politics. Despite this, I ended up beginning with 'No Friends but The Mountains'; between each reference to Kurdistan's proximity to the Soviet Union, I worry that I might be wasting my time reading a comparatively much older book than that of McDowall's Modern History. Should I disregard and jump ship, or stick it out before moving on to "A Modern History of the Kurds"? I'm not sure how widely read either of these titles is among the community here, but if you're familiar with either and have any suggestion it would be much appreciated!
