Competition Of Unfinished Stories [TRADE PAPER ]

Novelist, poet, and internationally acclaimed visual artist Sener Ozmen is one of today’ s most exciting contemporary voices in Kurdish literature. The darkly comic, profoundly moving The Competition of Unfinished Stories marks his English-language debut, one that is sure not to go unnoticed.Set in Turkish-occupied Kurdistan, Sertac, a vehement atheist, teaches theology classes at an Islamic school as he attempts to complete the stories he starts writing. As his frustrations mount, his marriage falls apart, fully untethering him from reality as he navigates through a throng of eclectic, larger-than-life characters attempting to inject levity into the madness that haunts Sertac.The Competition of Unfinished Stories is a strange and powerful novel on the schizophrenia and emasculation of life under colonial occupation that shows us how imagination can be more paralyzing than liberating.

[D]ryly funny, delightfully inventive, and politically sharp . . . If you like Rabih Alameddine's style, this is a great book for you! Samia Saliba, Arab American Writers

A breathtaking, virtuosic, dark, funny, furious, sad, and genuinely strange work of fiction. It's a book that twists and soars and obfuscates while transmitting its images and ideas with absolute clarity. Lydia Kiesling, author ofMobility
 

The narrative ofThe Competition of Unfinished Storiesisnt limited to the paragraphs that line these pages. Readers will find a number of very opinionated footnotes, which in turn give a sense of the free-associative elements of the protagonists train of thought. (One example: All mechanics are crooks. Not a one will see the gates of Heaven.) A series of endnotes continue this mood, creating a sense of irreverence even as the stakes for the novels protagonist increase. Words Without Borders

With equal parts starkness and absurdity, incision and humor,The Competition of UlÓ6