Salim Barakat
Salim Barakat is a Kurdish-Syrian writer who is considered one of the most innovative poets and novelists writing in the Arabic language. He was brought up in Qamishli in northern Syria and spent most of his youth there. After living in Beirut and Cyprus, he moved to Sweden in 1999, where he still resides. A prolific writer, Barakat has published dozens of novels and collections of poetry, and is distinguished from his contemporaries for the innovative use of style and theme within his writing.