11/06/2025
Coming soon: Ata Nahai's BIRDS IN A GALE!
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, this 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.
Available 12/2/2025, preorder with BIRDSINAGALE to save 25%: www.commonnotions.org/birds-in-a-gale