Salim Barakat

Salim Barakat was born in 1951 near Qamishli, on the Turkish border, into a Kurdish family of Syria, and grew up in contact with the neighbouring Assyrian and Armenian cultures. He would write all his work in Arabic. Having gone up to Damascus in 1970 to study Arabic literature, he did not last a year there and made his way to Beirut, where he was for a time active in the Palestinian resistance and became managing editor of the journal al-Karmel. He left Lebanon in 1982 for Cyprus, then settled in Sweden in 1999. His language, laden with rare words, makes him a case apart among Arab critics.

In the catalogue 1

• Novelفقهاء الظلامSalim Barakat · 1985not translated into EnglishLiterature