Golan Haji

Golan Haji (; born 10. November 1977) is a Syrian Kurdish writer, poet, and translator. He has published five poetry collections in Arabic, including He Called Out Within The Darknesses, which won the first prize in the Muhammad Al-Maghout Poetry Competition in 2006. He has translated several books from English into Arabic such as Palm-of-the-Hand Stories by Yasunari Kawabata and Dark Harbor by Mark Strand. Some of his works are part of Syrian literature in the context of war.

Life and career Golan Haji was born in Amouda, a Kurdish town in the north of Syria in 1977. He studied at the University of Damascus and earned a bachelor's degree in medicine and a postgraduate degree in pathology. Haji started his literary career when he published his first collection of poetry He Called Out Within The Darknesses in 2004 that was awarded the Muhammad Al-Maghout Prize in poetry. In 2008, he wrote his second collection of poetry Someone Sees You as a Monster, published during the events celebrating Damascus as Arab Capital of Culture. Further, Haji translated several literary works from English into Arabic, including the Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Scottish novelist Robert Louis Stevenson, the Palm-of-the-Hand Stories by Japanese writer Yasunari Kawabata, and Dark Harbor by Canadian-American poet Mark Strand. His own Arabic poetry has been translated into English, French, Italian and Danish. Since 2012, exiled because of the war in Syria, Haji has lived in Saint-Denis, France. He is married to French writer and translator Nathalie Bontemps.

Works

Arabic poetry He Called Out Within The Darknesses (original title: Nada al dulumat), 2004 Someone Sees You as a Monster (original title: Thamata mat yaraka wahshan), 2008 Autumn, Here, is Magical and Vast, 2013 Scale of Injury (original title: Mizan al atha), 2016 The Word Rejected, 2023

In English translation

A Tree Whose Name I Don’t Know. Translated by Stephen Watts and Golan Haji, New York: A Midsummer Night’s Press, 2017.

Non-fiction

Until the War: Women in the Syrian Revolution (original title: ila an kamat al harb: nisaa fi thawra al suryia), 2016

Translations from English

Al Mirfaa al Muthlim (original title: Dark Harbor), 2002 Dafatr modelima (original title: The Secret Notebooks), 2011 Stevenson tahta Ashgar al Nakheel (original title: Stevenson Under the Palm Trees), 2017 Hai Asakosa (original title: Palm-of-the-hand Stories), 2019

Awards

2006: first prize in the Muhammad Al-Maghout Poetry Competition