Kurdish literature in exile did not begin as a project. It began as a necessity. When writers fled repression in Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria across the twentieth century, they carried their languages with them and, sooner or later, found ways to keep writing and publishing in them. What grew from that scattered effort is a genuine literary culture, spread across Sweden, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and further afield, producing books, journals and prizes that have given Kurdish writing an international presence it was long denied at home.
The publishing houses that made it possible
The most sustained publishing work in the diaspora has happened in Sweden, which received large waves of Kurdish refugees from the 1970s onwards. Stockholm and other Swedish cities became home to Kurdish cultural associations that set up small presses, often with minimal funding, printing poetry collections, novels and political memoirs in Kurmanji and Sorani. Germany followed a similar path, particularly in Berlin and Cologne, where the Kurdish community is large and long-established.
Apec Verlag, based in Germany, became one of the better-known Kurdish publishing houses in Europe, releasing titles in several Kurdish dialects. In the United Kingdom, smaller operations produced work aimed partly at the diaspora community and partly at academic readers. None of these ventures were commercially comfortable. Kurdish-language books have a limited market almost by definition, because formal literacy in Kurdish was suppressed for generations across all four parts of Kurdistan. Publishers relied on community support, cultural grants and the sheer determination of editors who believed the work mattered.
Magazines and journals: the thread between readers
Before the internet, magazines were the main way scattered Kurdish communities stayed connected to their literary culture. Titles appeared and disappeared over the decades, dependent on funding and the energy of small editorial teams. Nûdem, a Kurdish literary and cultural journal published in Sweden from the early 1990s, became one of the most respected of these. It published poetry, short fiction, criticism and cultural essays in Kurmanji, and ran for a significant number of years before eventually ceasing publication. For many readers in the diaspora, it was their primary contact with contemporary Kurdish writing.
Other magazines served different communities and dialects. Sorani-language publications appeared in London and Stockholm. Zazaki, the language spoken in parts of what is now eastern Turkey, had its own small journals produced by Zaza cultural organisations in Europe. These publications were rarely glossy or well-funded, but they performed a function that went beyond entertainment. They were spaces where writers could argue about the direction of Kurdish literature, debate orthography and grammar, and simply demonstrate that the language was alive and capable of carrying new ideas.
Prizes and recognition
Literary prizes came later and have grown in number and visibility in recent years. The Kurdish PEN community, connected to PEN International, the global writers’ organisation, has campaigned for imprisoned and exiled Kurdish authors while also working to celebrate those who write freely. Various Kurdish cultural festivals across Europe have included literary awards as part of their programmes, recognising poets and novelists writing in the diaspora.
Recognition has also come from the broader literary world. Kurdish writers have been included in international anthologies of world literature in translation, and individual authors writing in Kurdish have received attention from translation grants and foreign literary organisations. This outside recognition matters partly because it creates new readers, and partly because it strengthens the argument, made within the diaspora itself, that Kurdish is a fully equipped literary language capable of standing alongside any other.
Writing between two worlds
Many Kurdish writers in exile work across languages. Some write primarily in Kurdish and seek translation. Others write in Swedish, German, French or English, drawing on Kurdish experience and memory while addressing a wider audience. A few move between both, publishing in Kurdish for the community and in a European language for a different readership. This is not a tension unique to Kurds, it is the familiar condition of writing in exile, and Kurdish authors have handled it in ways as varied as their own backgrounds.
What connects them is the question of what it means to keep a literary tradition going when the geography it comes from is partly inaccessible, partly dangerous, and always complicated. The answer, it turns out, is to keep writing, keep printing and keep reading aloud to each other.
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