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Gabor
In a Kurdish village under military occupation, a group of boys scrape together their savings and buy a hand-stitched football to prove they aren't losers to the other kids. When it lands inside the opposing military base, Karim sneaks in and takes it back—only for the soldiers to burn the neighborhood to the ground looking for it. Streets are bombed, homes are raided, snipers take aim at pedestrians, residents are dragged off and imprisoned. As the casualty rate skyrockets, Karim and his friends retaliate by firing junkyard scraps from their slingshots while raging bulls escape slaughterhouses to stampede into warfare.
Told through contradicting, unreliable narrators and almost entirely in dialogue, Seyed Qader Hedayati's GABOR fuses the experimentation of George Saunders with the absurdist satire of Joseph Heller to deliver a seldom explored portrait of friendship and boyhood under the anarchy of occupation.
Told through contradicting, unreliable narrators and almost entirely in dialogue, Seyed Qader Hedayati's GABOR fuses the experimentation of George Saunders with the absurdist satire of Joseph Heller to deliver a seldom explored portrait of friendship and boyhood under the anarchy of occupation.
220 pages, Paperback
Published August 25, 2026
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Review of advance copy received from Publisher
(ARC provided by publisher, Henar Press)
This book is not for everyone. But it is for those who are not squeamish and for those interested in experimental literature that has been translated from a language and region not often seen in English.
It is for readers who want to cheer on the boys who find out that the oppressors are scared of them knowing their language. It is for readers who want the cattle to escape the inhumane slaughter house.
Imagine if Mother by Maxim Gorky was written in Kurdish, set in the 90s, and following teenage boys.
This book is not for everyone. But it is for those who are not squeamish and for those interested in experimental literature that has been translated from a language and region not often seen in English.
It is for readers who want to cheer on the boys who find out that the oppressors are scared of them knowing their language. It is for readers who want the cattle to escape the inhumane slaughter house.
Imagine if Mother by Maxim Gorky was written in Kurdish, set in the 90s, and following teenage boys.
Displaying 1 of 1 review