Refugee 33,333

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A collection of poetry from acclaimed yet underrepresented Kurdish poet Farhad Pirbal. Like his contemporary Abdulla Pashew, this poetry is a chronicle of exile and displacement, longing and not belonging. Poetry in turns wistful and disoriented, Refugee Number 33,333 reflects Pirbal's role as dissident and persecuted prisoner, drawing on four different collections originally written in Kurdish. "Poéte maudit" of Kurdistan, Pirbal is known as well for his highly publicized antics as for his prolific literary output. Pirbal, born in 1961, "may be the greatest innovator of Kurdish literature in the twentieth century, in both poetry and prose" (Shook, Poetry Foundation).