Dancing Amid Fire, Rising Above Ruins is a powerful literary novel that weaves memory, exile, trauma, and resistance into an intimate and poetic narrative. Blending lyrical language with political urgency, the novel stands at the intersection of literature, testimony, and feminist resistance.
Set between Kurdistan, Iran, Turkey, and Northern Europe, the story follows Tara-a Kurdish woman living in exile-as she navigates grief, political violence, forbidden love, and the long shadows of revolution. Through fragmented timelines and interwoven voices, the novel moves between personal loss and collective history, revealing how women's bodies and memories become sites of resistance under patriarchy, state violence, war, and displacement.
Rooted in Kurdish culture and oral tradition, yet written with a universal literary sensibility, Dancing Amid Fire, Rising Above Ruins explores the psychological aftermath of political trauma, the inheritance of pain across generations, and the quiet defiance of women who refuse to disappear. It is a novel about survival, remembrance, and the enduring power of women's voices in the face of erasure.
This novel speaks to readers of literary fiction, feminist narratives, postcolonial literature, and stories of exile-offering a rare and deeply human perspective on a region and a people too often rendered invisible.Selected Praise
"Dancing Amid Fire, Rising Above Ruins is a visceral but evocative debut novel... fully immersing the reader in Kurdish culture and tradition."
- Neema Shah, award-winning author of Kololo Hill
"An impressive accomplishment, born out of love and rage, that shows how the personal is always political, especially for a Kurdish woman born in Iran."
- Wendelmoet Hamelink, author of The Sung Home, Centre for Gender Studies, University of Oslo
"A prescient and lyrically descriptive journey on Kurdishness in the diaspora... connecting women's liberation and freedom in Iran to our current interpersonal and international eras."
- Thoreau Redcrow, Co-Director, The Kurdish Center for Studies
"A tightly crafted tale of one woman's personal and political turmoil... a window into a world too readily ignored by the sweep of history. A book not to be missed."
- Michael Matheson, writer, editor, and feminist activist
"A novel that bridges past and present, homeland and exile, tracing Kurdish memory from revolutionary Iran to the 'Woman, Life, Freedom' movement."
- Sherzad Hassan, author of Hasar u Sagkani Bawkim, one of the most influential Kurdish writers of the last two decadesFor Readers Who Loved...
Dancing Amid Fire, Rising Above Ruins will resonate with readers drawn to politically engaged literary fiction, novels of memory and trauma, and stories centered on women's resistance and survival. It will appeal to readers of works by Toni Morrison, Herta Müller, and Elif Shafak, as well as those interested in feminist, postcolonial, and diasporic narratives.
