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.