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Penned in Turkish by jailed politician Selahattin Demirtaş, storybook "Devran" and novel "Leylan" have been published in Kurdish.
Demirtaş, the former Co-Chair of the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), has been arrested in Edirne Type F Prison since November 2014. Both of these fiction books were published when he was behind bars.
His books are now also available in the Kurmanji dialect of Kurdish thanks to the translation of Rêdûr Dîjle. "Dewran" and "Leylan", the Kurdish editions of the books, have been published by the Aram Publishing.
While Devran was the second storybook of Selahattin Demirtaş after "Seher", this first story book was also translated into the Kurmanji dialect by Rêdûr Dîjle and published by Aram Publishing House.
"Leylan", the first novel and the third fiction book of the politician, was published on January 22, 2020.
Dîjle translated 'Seher' as well
Rêdûr Dîjle is the translator of all these three books into Kurdish. He himself has two poetry books. Speaking to bianet after the Kurdish edition of "Seher was published, Dîjle briefly said the following:
"We need to consider Seher as part of prison literature or even in the category of resistance literature. Demirtaş is a politician who engages in democratic politics in the political sphere and becomes a source of hope for the society of Turkey. He was resisting outside.
"When he was arrested, this resistance was kept on in a way oriented towards the art. When we look at world literature, we can see that several people produce literary works in prison." (FD/SD)
