Bachtyar Ali

Bachtyar Ali (born August 8, 1960) is a well-known Kurdish writer, poet, and thinker. He started by writing poems, but in the mid-1990s, he became a very popular novelist. He has written 13 novels, as well as many books of poems and essays.

Since the mid-1990s, Ali has lived in Germany (in Frankfurt, Cologne, and Bonn). In his writing, he covers serious topics, such as the 1988 Anfal genocide under Saddam Hussein and the relationship between power and intellectuals. He often uses Western philosophy to explain problems in Kurdish society, adapting these ideas to his own context.