The Competition of Unfinished Stories

Novelist, poet, and internationally acclaimed visual artist Sener Ozmen is one of today’ s most exciting contemporary voices in Kurdish literature. The darkly comic, profoundly moving The Competition of Unfinished Stories marks his English-language debut, one that is sure not to go unnoticed. Set in Turkish-occupied Kurdistan, Sertac, a vehement atheist, teaches theology classes at an Islamic school as he attempts to complete the stories he starts writing. As his frustrations mount, his marriage falls apart, fully untethering him from reality as he navigates through a throng of eclectic, larger-than-life characters attempting to inject levity into the madness that haunts Sertac. The Competition of Unfinished Stories is a strange and powerful novel on the schizophrenia and emasculation of life under colonial occupation that shows us how imagination can be more paralyzing than liberating.

Sener Ozmen is a new media artist and writer living in Wilmette, Illinois. He practiced dissident contemporary art practices that developed in Istanbul after the 1990s, and in Diyarbakir in the 2000s. Writing in his unique language, his articles on topics such as Kurdish identity, nationalism, and production of art in conflict zones have been published in numerous international magazines and newspapers. Ozmen's short films and video works have been shown in the world's most respected contemporary art museums, including the Centre Pompidou, Stedelijk Museum, and Kunsthalle Fridericianum.

Nicholas Glastonbury is a writer and translator of Turkish and Kurdish literature. His translation of Sema Kaygusuz's novel Every Fire You Tend received the 2020 TA First Translation Prize from the Society of Authors. He holds a PhD in cultural anthropology.