Birds in a Gale: A Novel
Birds in a Gale: A Novel
Ata Nahai
Translated by Chiya Parvizpur & Hourieh Maleki Qouzloo, with an Introduction by Kawan Mohammadpur
A kaleidoscopic novel of politics, identity, and dislocation in the wake of the Islamic Revolution.
Some years after the overthrow of the Shah, Mehraban has returned to Iran after a period of wandering and isolation to write the story of a famed Kurdish revolutionary named Farhad. Guided by our unnamed narrator, Mehraban pursues his story and its living-dead subject, learning that he and Farhad share bittersweet memories of a lost love amid fractured historical nightmares. Trapped in consciousness, trapped by mortality, trapped in a world that is not and cannot be objective, Birds in a Gale turns in on itself, entangling Mehraban’s and Farhad’s once-separate identities irrevocably, before rejecting the objective altogether.
Originally published in 2002, Birds in a Gale is a poignant, psychological, and deeply political effort by one of Kurdistan’s best-loved writers to restore the Kurds to their rightful place in revolutionary history. This inventive metatext, lucidly translated by Chiya Parvizpur and Hourieh Maleki Qouzloo, is reminiscent of the best of George Saunders and Elias Khoury, and an instant classic of twenty-first century world literature.
Product Details
ISBN: 9781945335457
Published: December 2, 2025
Format: Paperback
Size: 5.5 in x 8.5 in
Page count: 240
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“Birds in a Gale is a literary resurrection of a silenced, stateless nation: a Kurdish exile returns home to write the story of an Iranian revolutionary figure whose memory was erased first by the Shah, and then by the Ayatollah. But his attempt to record this singular life becomes a meditation on shattered ideals, complicity, and the dissolution of individual identity into collective trauma. Like Herta Müller or W. G. Sebald, Nahai’s prose moves between realism and allegory, dream and testimony, but this metafictional masterpiece is a kind of survival, and this fractured and fragmented work is the only honest shape a violently suppressed history can take." —Ava Homa, author of Daughters of Smoke and Fire
“Ata Nahai is Iran's most famous novelist writing in Kurdish.... Nahai has represented Kurdish life and identity for decades...to read Nahai is to grapple with the desire for home and homeland.” —Zakarya Bezdoode, University of Kurdistan
“What distinguishes Nahai from most of his predecessors is that he has not reduced his work to the mouthpiece of a given ideology or political party. In other words, he has not compromised.”“The characters in Birds in Gale embody fluidity, slipperiness, and unreliability, reflecting the existential nightmare of those who dwell within its world—an ambiguous space that could be anywhere. These individuals are deeply immersed in a realm of dreams and nightmares, at times yearning to escape from everything, while at others, seemingly drawn back to a bygone era, a distant past.” —Shahrwand Newspaper, Issue 1969, Wednesday, May 12th, 2020
“The essence of Birds in Gale is crafted with poetic language and a gripping technique, drawing from the profound lexicon of anguish amidst the maze of prisons, oppression, and exile. Each word resonates with the weight of its own, emerging from the depths of despair, lingering with an unanswered question” —Shahla Dabaghi
“The hazy, partially incomplete memories that underpin the narrative are as sporadic and elusive as blindness, akin to a flock of blind birds dispersed throughout the novel, lacking a cohesive narrative thread, devoid of a typical linear progression.” —Dr. Saadi Haji
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