Kurdish Book Club

Kurdish literature is rich, compelling, and diverse, and it should be better known.  In our Book Club we read novels as well as nonfiction, then meet to discuss them (in English).

We meet on the first Tuesday of each month, at 7pm ET via Zoom. Come join us—share your thoughts, expand your understanding, and build bonds.

To find out more or to register, write to bookclub@nykcc.org.

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Our next Book Club meeting will take place on Tuesday, March 4, 2025, at 7pm ET.  We’ll be discussing Letters from a Kurd, a 2014 novel by Kae Bahar.

Marywan Rashaba, nicknamed Mary, is a Kurdish boy growing up in Kirkuk, in Başur, in the 1980s, under the regime of Saddam Hussein. The Ba’ath policy toward Kurds is to Arabize them and ban their language. Not only does Mary belong to an  oppressed ethnic minority; his gender identity is indistinct, in a place and time of repressed sexual politics. The war between Iran and Iraq is ongoing, and the paranoid regime strikes its Kurdish citizens repeatedly and tragically. Marywan escapes these grim circumstances into a world of magic and adventure: foreign films, where he tries to find a semblance of life and love. Marywan’s personality embodies the clash between tradition and modernity, between religion and atheism, between East and West. His experience reflect the history, myths, and culture of the Kurdish nation.

This book is 418 pages long, so we are taking two months to order and read it. The book is published by Yolk Publishing (UK) and is available for purchase through their website as well as other online bookstores.

Date and time: Tuesday, March 4, 2025, at 7pm ET

Place: Zoom

For information about the Book Club, please write to bookclub@nykcc.org.