Refugee Number 33

A collection of poetry from acclaimed yet underrepresented Kurdish poet Farhad Pirbal.

Like that of his contemporary Abdulla Pashew, Farhad Pirbals poetry is a chronicle of exile and displacement, longing and not belonging. The poetry is in turns wistful and disoriented, reflecting his role as a dissident and persecuted prisoner. "Poète maudit" of Kurdistan, Pirbal is known as well for his highly publicized antics as for his prolific literary output. Pirbal, born in 1961, "may be the greatest innovator of Kurdish literature in the twentieth century, in both poetry and prose" (Shook, Poetry Foundation).