A young Kurdish woman discovers a commitment to liberation, both personal and collective, through a harrowing journey to Rojava and the heart of armed struggle.
Jînçin is a young professor living in Berlin, born to a Yezedi father who years earlier was shunned and exiled for marrying outside his community, and who late in life makes the surprising and fateful decision to return to his homeland to join the Kurdish People’s Defense Units (YPG) in their fight against the Islamic State.
Searching for answers as to why the father she adored would give his life for such a cause, Jînçin embarks on a clandestine journey through various autonomous territories of embattled Kurdistan—from Başûr [northern Iraq, southern Kurdistan] to Bakûr [southeast Turkey, northern Kurdistan], to the remote mountains of Rojava [western Kurdistan] in northeastern Syria.
With little training and without warning, she is plunged into the freedom struggle as she confronts the extremist threat that faces the Kurds, from bloody skirmishes with ISIS to drone strikes and the clandestine operations and brutal human rights abuses of the Turkish military.
Her new life as a guerrilla is a bitter and arduous one, but also one of rich discovery. Over months of mournful, intimate, and often-times playful conversations with her comrades, as well as remarkable acts of resistance and narrow escapes from grave danger, Jînçin finally grasps her place and purpose in the world.
Ultimately, Rojava is the story of people living and fighting shoulder-to-shoulder who have decided, regardless of the present world order and in spite of the odds stacked against them, to build a society free from discrimination, based on shared dignity and collective autonomy.
What People Are Saying
"Form Lu Hsun, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Wole Soyinka, Pramoedya Ananta Toer, Ghassan Kanafani, Mulk Raj Anand, Munshi Prem Chand, national liberation struggles have always been a wellspring of stories and a source of inspiration for storytellers. Rojava is no exception. Gathered from the font of the Kurdish liberation struggles, Sharam Qawami weaves stories of real people engaged in real struggles into a story of the indefatigable human spirit. Far from refusing to succumb and let their humanity unravel in the face of fascism, militarism, patriarchy, ecological destruction, as well as the breakdown of comradeship and social relationships, the humanity of these characters resurface precisely in moments between despair and determination. Qawami lets the characters tell the story of a century-old struggle with all its contradictions, tensions, and dissensions in the past and present, and through the burning human desire for freedom and justice that holds them together. Whatever the twists and turns in the Kurdish liberation struggle, Rojava will continue to educate and inspire." Radha D'Souza, author of What's Wrong with Rights? Social Movements, Law and Liberal Imaginations and professor of law at the University of Westminster, London
"Sharam Qawami has packed much of the history of the Kurdish movement as a whole and of Rojava in particular into this highly readable and inspiring novel. In turns suspenseful, introspective, and even humorous, Quawami leaves plenty of room for nuance and the manifold stories of characters in their multiple dimension and complexity, while avoiding the pitfalls of romanticizing or heroising the history and ongoing struggle of guerilla fighters who dare to imagine and win freedom—all of which makes the novel immensely gripping and worth reading." Thomas Schmidinger, author of Rojava: Revolution, War and the Future of Syria's Kurds and associate professor of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Kurdistan Hewlêr
About the Author
Sharam Qawami is an Iranian-Kurdish writer and literary critic, born in Sine (Sanandaj), Iran, in 1974. He was expelled from the university for political reasons. Qawami has been actively writing short stories, poetry, novels, and literary critiques for many years, navigating state censors and political exile. He is the author of several books and whose work holds a special place among Kurdistan’s literary class.
His first collection of short stories is entitled My Mother's Most Historical Wound. In 2003, the license for his first novel, Soveyla, was rejected by the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, which he published in Iraq. His second novel, Birba, was deemed too radical, and led to his arrest and imprisonment at the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Sanandaj Intelligence Prison. In 2007, he published a book of literary criticism, The City of Groups and Bands, in Iran. In 2008, he published his third novel, Long Overcoat, in Sulaymaniyah, Iraq. Iranian security forces prevented the Persian translation. In 2010, he published a collection of poems entitled We Are Just Getting Old and Lonely without permission.
Sharam Qawami settled in Frankfurt, Germany after being forced to leave Iran in 2010 where he resides to this day. In 2017, he published his first novel written in German, Brücke des Tanzes, which was subsequently published in Kurdish. Sharam Qawami's latest work of fiction, Rojava, was written in both Kurdish and German simultaneously. The Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance of Iran refused publishing permission for the Kurdish and Farsi manuscripts due to their breach of Iranian laws. Quwami decided to publish Rojava in both Kurdish and Farsi without permission. The book is now available in both languages within Iran. Rojava is his first work to be published in English.
Kiyoumars Zamani (Translator) is a translator of Kurdish and Farsi literature and labor activist born in Sanandaj, Iran, 1977. He has written and translated from English into Farsi widely on topics including financialization, illiberal hegemony, revolution and counterrevolution in Syria, Marx’s materialist conception of history, as well as articles on Rojava, Russia and Ukraine-NATO war, feminist, popular, and working class uprisings in Iran (Jin-Jiyan-Azadi), and Kurdish politics.Patrick Germain (Editor) lives in Philadelphia, by way of a small town in Connecticut, Montreal, New York, and Taipei. He graduated from McGill University with a bachelors in Philosophy and East Asian Studies, the latter focusing on Chinese language. An autodidact trained in several languages, including Kurdish, his study of philosophy, cultures, languages, and history is motivated by those bright flashes in time when people transcend the current system and find ways to live more freely and cooperatively.