The Competiton of Unfinished Stories

Novelist, poet, and internationally acclaimed visual artist Sener Ozmen is one of today’s most exciting voices in Kurdish literature. The darkly comic and profoundly moving The Competition of Unfinished Stories marks his English-language debut.

Set in Turkish-occupied Kurdistan, The Competition of Unfinished Stories shadows Sertac Karan, a vehement atheist who teaches at an Islamic school. Subjugated by the Turkish authorities, emasculated by his wife, harangued by his family and students, and jaded by prospects for a Kurdish revolution, Sertac begins to lose his mind. Seeking narrative grounding over his life in the stories he tries to write, the eclectic cast of characters populating Sertac’s world fully untethers him from reality. As the novel progresses, these characters—as well as the book’s author and translator—try, and fail, to take control over Sertac’s story, blurring the lines between his waking fantasies, his nightmares, and his fictions. At turns brash, hilarious, unsettling, and poignant, the dizzying plight of Sertac makes it all too clear how language, no matter which one is being used, fails us as often as it helps us. 

The first novel from the Kurmancî dialect of Kurdish to appear in English, The Competition of Unfinished Stories is a strange and powerful exploration about the schizophrenia of life under colonial occupation that demonstrates how imagination can be more paralyzing than liberating.