I. B. Tauris & Company Imagining Kurdistan: Identity, Culture and Society (Library of Modern Middle East Studies) (Written Culture and Identity)

From the First Gulf War to the present upheaval in Syria, the Kurdish question has been a crucial issue within the Middle East region and in international politics. Spread across several countries, the Kurds constitute the largest stateless nation in the world. In this context, a striking question arises: how are Kurdish identity and the idea of the homeland - both as a symbol and as territorial space - constructed in writings from Turkish Kurdistan and its diaspora? Through a comparative analysis of Kurdish writing, Ozlem Galip here provides the first comprehensive look at modern Kurdish literature. Drawing on theories of space and collective memory and exploring the use of the historical past and personal memories in the literature of stateless nations, this book analyses the construction of the imaginary homeland and the concept of Kurdish identity. Review Imaging Kurdistan is an invaluable source on the construction of identity, sense of place, (non)-belonging and home in Kurdish literature. Özlem Galip s study illuminates this under-researched subject with clarity. Taking a multi-dimensional and dynamic idea of Kurdistan and challenging definitions of home as stable centre, Galip examines how the idea of Kurdistan as home operates in Kurdish novels: it is glorified as a historic home in the past, shown as the destroyed home of the present and depicted as free in the future; it is imagined both as an ideal home and as a betrayed home. Portrayed as idealised future homeland in juxtaposition with the harsh socio-political reality, the idea of Kurdistan also comes to create a contemporary sense of lived homelessness. Taking up argument with human geographers, Galip shows how literature produced in Kurdistan today stresses loss of home more than that produced abroad; and linking this to the subordinated status of Kurds in Kurdistan, she reveals how a physical insideness evokes an experience of outsideness. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in literature and multiple constructions of identity, sense of place, belonging and home. Joost Jongerden, Sociology and Anthropology of Development, Wageningen University This literary history of the Kurds, the largest stateless nation in the world, makes an indispensible contribution, together with cultural history, to Kurdish political, social and economic history, as well as to the study of identity formation, migration and diaspora. It places imagination and homeland centre stage, recuperating both from the margins into which oppressive state policies drives these fundamental human faculties and ideals. Özlem Belçim Galip s book blazes a trail in Kurdish Literary studies, firmly establishing the Kurdish novel written in Kurmanji since the 1980s in its context of struggle for liberation, focusing on writing in Turkish Kurdistan and in the European diaspora. Lucid introductory chapters trace Kurdish geopolitical and literary history and the development of national ideas, setting the stage for a study of the development of Kurdish novelistic discourse as expression of individual and national identity, formulating incisive views on the interpretation of contemporary Kurdish culture and society. --Theo van Lint, Professor of Armenian Studies, The Oriental Institute, University of Oxford About the Author Ozlem Galip is a Lecturer at the Institute of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford. She holds a PhD in Kurdish Studies from the University of Exeter. Her main research interests are Kurdish literature, novelistic discourse, migration and diaspora studies. She is also the UK correspondent of the Kurdish newspaper Yeni Ozgur Politika which is based in Germany.