Salim Barakat سليم بركات / Selîm Berekat
Born	(1951-09-01)1 September 1951 (age 73) Qamishli,Syria
Occupation	novelist,poet
Language	Arabic
Nationality	Syrian
Genre	Magical realism,children's literature
Years active	1973–present
Notable works	Jurists of Darkness,Come, take a Gentle Stab: Selected Poems

Salim Barakat (Arabic:سليم بركات,Kurdish:Selîm Berekat; born 1 September 1951 inQamishli) is aKurdish-Syrian novelist and poet. He is considered one of the innovative poets and novelists writing inArabic. Since the 1970s, he has published numerous novels, poetry collections, biographies and children's books. Several of his works have been translated into Kurdish, English, French, German, Swedish and other languages.

Barakat was brought up in the city ofQamishli in an area in northern Syria with a large Kurdish population and spent most of his youth there. In 1970 he moved toDamascus to studyArabic literature but after one year he moved toBeirut where he stayed until 1982. While in Beirut he published five volumes of poetry, a diary and two volumes of autobiography. He moved toCyprus and worked as a managing editor of the prestigiousPalestinian journalAl Karmel, whose editor wasMahmoud Darwish. In 1999 he moved to Sweden, where he still resides.^[1]

He wrote aboutKurdish culture,^[2] as well asArab,Assyrian,Armenian,Circassian andYazidi culture.^[1] His earliest major prose work,Al-Jundub al-Hadidi (The Iron Grasshopper), is an autobiography of his childhood in Qamishli.^[3]

Stefan G. Meyer said "Barkat's style is probably the closest by any Arab writer's to that ofLatin Americanmagical realism" and has called Barakat "perhaps the master prose stylist writing in Arabic today".^[3]

In the 2006 anthologyLiterature from the "Axis of Evil", an excerpt from his novelJurists of Darkness (1985) in English was published byWords Without Borders.^[4]

According to online magazineLiterary hub, Barakat had been one of the official candidates for the 2022Nobel Prize for Literature.^[5]

• An excerpt from his novelJurists of Darkness. In:Literature from the Axis of Evil : Writing from Iran, Iraq, North Korea and Other Enemy Nations: A Words Without Borders Anthology. 2006. New York: New Press.

• Salīm Barakāt, Huda J. Fakhreddine and Jayson Iwen. 2021.Come, Take a Gentle Stab: Selected Poems. London: Seagull Books, ISBN 9781803091952.

• Salīm Barakāt and Huda J. Fakhreddine. 2024.The Universe, All at Once: Selected Poems. London: Seagull Books, ISBN 9781803094038.

I

• Syrian literature

• Excerpt from Salim Barakat's novelThe Feathers

• 1951 births
• Living people
• People from Qamishli
• Syrian Kurdish people
• Syrian novelists
• Syrian poets
• Kurdish poets
• Syrian emigrants to Sweden

• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Articles containing Arabic-language text
• Articles containing Kurdish-language text