»A writer who combines the political with the poetic to create a unique narrative language.«
Süddeutsche Zeitung

»His books say what cannot be said in Kurdistan. Grippingly and with fantastic methods, he creates a space for the individual in the face of the demands of a brutalised society.«
WDR3

»My Uncle Jamshid Khan covers a broad time frame and also touches on current issues such as human trafficking and the rise of digital media as the fifth power, with narrative economy and a lean style that matches the protagonist’s character well.«
Perlentaucher

»Each of us carries within him or herself a Djamschid part and a Salar part. One part of us flies, the other part sticks to the ground because we lack the courage to move.«
Bachtyar Ali in an interview with Gerwig Epkes

»I’ve read a lot of novels, many of them beautiful novels, but if I have to choose ten of them, I’d have to include all four of Bakhtyar Ali’s novels.« [He had published four novels up to then.]
Sherzad Hassan, Well-known Kurdish writer

»Ali is not only a gifted storyteller, but also a razor-sharp analyst of the circumstances, upheavals and adversities in his homeland and other Middle Eastern countries.«
Bernd Melichar, Kleine Zeitung

»Both his own experience and his profound knowledge of European theory construction enable Bachtyar Ali in a special way to create a typology of the Middle Eastern despot (magnificent in this respect is his essay ‘The Dictator’s Smile‘ on Saddam Hussein) as well as a structural analysis of Middle Eastern totalitarianism. With this slim volume, Bachtyar Ali proves himself to be a perceptive, profound, linguistically and visually powerful thinker and essayist.«
Hartmut Buchholz, Badische Zeitung

»Bachtyar Ali invites us to hope and believe in literature as a form of resilience.«
Corriere della sera

»A great novel about art and reconciliation.«
Die Zeit

»With Jaladat, Bachtyar Ali creates a Simplicissimus of the Orient.«
Bayerischer Rundfunk

»After spending his years in prison trying to forget — “all my memories turned to sand” —Muzafar is released from his desert confinement and immediately tries to locate his son. It is this persistent search for truth that lies at the heart of The Last Pomegranate Tree . . . Ali shows his readers that while truth at first seems a monolith, a different perspective can reveal a new aspect, a new verity, equally as valid as the first.«
Asymptote Journal

»A tour de force . . . The urban scenes contribute to the author’s in-the-round portrait of his homeland, showing us more than bunkers and bomb craters, suggesting fertility and possibility . . . Isn’t it a fine novel that sustains such counterpoint? Alive with the tension between humanity and hatred?«
Brooklyn Rail

»Dazzlingly inventive, The Last Pomegranate Tree has Ali engaging with his common themes and, at the same time, employing his trademark style — gritty realism combined with myth, allegory and fantastical flourishes.«
The National

»After being held in a desert prison for 21 years, a Peshmerga fighter in Iraq desperately searches for his son, setting off on a quest guided by memory and myth in this imaginative novel.«
New York Times

»The Last Pomegranate Tree, a modern Kurdish fable, is an immersive, entertaining tale that fuses the charm of ancient legend with the harsh reality of contemporary history. It honours a generation lost or, worse, hardened to death and disaster by years of hostility—both coming from outside the troubled region and arising from within. Resilience, as fragile as the glass pomegranates at the heart of his tale, is what Muzafar-i Subhdam cherishes and holds close as he trusts the convoluted story of Saryas-i Subhdam to a group of refugees lost at sea.«
Rough Ghosts

»Superbly realized novel of life, death, and what lies between. […] Blending magical realism with dark fables worthy of Kafka, Kurdish novelist Ali spins episodes that require the willing suspension of disbelief while richly rewarding that surrender. […] Altogether extraordinary: a masterwork of modern Middle Eastern literature deserving the widest possible audience.«
Kirkus

»Episode by episode, the story earns that hoary old compliment, “spellbinding,” since so much of what happens has the magic of One Thousand and One Nights.«
The Brooklyn Rail

»Ali’s novel is a visionary wonder that plunges into the dreamscape of a people’s fraught memory. For readers, this is unforgettable.«
Publishers Weekly

»The book is a drumbeat. You understand immediately why the author has cult status in the Middle East. How could such an author hide for so long from our book market? There’s a lot we are going to hear and to read from him.«
Süddeutsche Zeitung

»For twenty years the magician of pictures from Kurdistan lived undetected in Germany. Now Unionsverlag publishes in German his powerful parable.«
Neue Zürcher Zeitung

»A timeless and contemporary story, wrapped in a fairytale atmosphere.«
Il Libraio

»A powerful, bleak panorama of a society scarred by history.«
Times Literary Supplement

»A leading novelist who marks a new era.«
BBC

»Great world literature. Buy, read, marvel!.«
WDR 3, Köln

»A manifestation of humanity in the face of the greatest despair.«
Deutschlandradio

»Bachtyar Ali´s skillful, seamless movement between history and mythologies is unique in its political engagement and cultural depths.«
Rawi Hage

»A deftly scripted chronicle of war and a memorable story of love between a father and his son from one of Iraq’s most celebrated contemporary writers . . . An eloquent and deftly crafted work of literature that will linger in the mind and memory of the reader long after the book has been finished.«
Midwest Book Review

»Kareem Abdulrahman’s stunning English translation of the Kurdish-language novel The Last Pomegranate Tree by Bachtyar Ali…hovers on the divide between realism and fable…Hints of the divine are what give life to the story…Everything, in the end, is both human and fantastic.«
Vagabond City

»With charm and grace, with anger and imagination, Ali . . . shows what decades of violence have done to Kurdistan—the depredations of Saddam, the corruption of politicians, the brutalization of the population. The book is unflinching: violence and cruelty really are everywhere. But life also contains the sublime beauty of the last pomegranate tree. It’s not magical. It’s not outside this world. It’s just hard to find through the chaos.«
Necessary Fiction

»The Last Pomegranate Tree is a novel filled with wonderful characters, scenes and stories. It is not afraid to venture into the surreal or mystical, yet, in doing so, it paints an often heart-breakingly realistic picture of Kurdish Iraq. It offers hope in the patience and acceptance of its long-suffering narrator now undertaking a dangerous voyage in pursuit of the third Saryas, for, as he says, ‘I cannot be angry at this vast sea that plays with us mercilessly.’«
1streading

»The women lead the way. Parwana’s Evening is a book about their fate in an environment constantly threatened by war, religious fanaticism and everyday patriarchy. Time and again, the action is driven by forces that go beyond the historical setting of the novel, thus giving it a lightness that is hopeful and comforting.«
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

»Parwana´s Evening is once again a piece of great literature.«
Frankfurter Rundschau

»Parwana‘s Evening‘s description of a society controlled by religious fundamentalists is more relevant today than ever.«
Bayerischer Rundfunk

»Bachtyar Ali belongs to the greatest writers in world literature.«
Ali Ashraf Darweshyan, Head of the Iranian Writers Association

»Bachtyar Ali is one of the greatest writers of Eastern literature.«
Fazil Thamir, Head of the Iraqi Writers Union

»I’ve read a lot of novels, many of them beautiful novels, but if I have to choose ten of them, I’d have to include all four of Bakhtyar Ali’s novels.«[He had published four novels up to then.]
Sherzad Hassan, Well-known Kurdish writer

»If in centuries to come someone wants to understand present-day Kurdish society, reading Bakhtyar Ali’s novels would be what they need to do.«
Mariwan Kanie, Eminent Kurdish critic

»Parwana´s Evening is tremendously topical. The novel contains a weightiness and a ruthlessness that keeps you engrossed while reading and even afterwards.«
Radio FM4, Wien