Salim Barakat (born 1951) is a Syrian-Kurdish novelist, poet, and man of letters.
Born in 1951 in the village of Musisana—near the city of Amuda in the Qamishli countryside, Syria—he spent his childhood and early youth in his hometown. This period allowed him to familiarize himself with its cultural nuances as well as neighboring cultures, such as the Assyrian and Armenian. In 1970, he moved to Damascus to study Arabic literature, but a year later relocated to Beirut, where he remained until 1982. During his time in Beirut, he published five poetry collections, a volume of memoirs, and two volumes of autobiography. He later moved to Cyprus, where he served as managing editor of the prestigious Palestinian magazine *Al-Karmel*, edited by Mahmoud Darwish. In 1999, he moved to Sweden, where he continues to reside.
His works explore Kurdish culture and chronicle the plight and history of the Kurdish people, while also engaging with Arab, Assyrian, Armenian, Circassian, and Yazidi cultures. His earliest prose work, *The Iron Grasshopper* (*Al-Jundub al-Hadidi*), is an autobiographical account of his childhood in Qamishli. The book explores the harsh and violent conditions of his early adolescence and is imbued with a deep sense of nostalgia for the land and Kurdish culture. The first part of the book’s lengthy subtitle translates to: “Incomplete memoirs of a child who never saw anything but a land for fugitives.”
Barakat is described as one of the most creative poets and novelists writing in Arabic. Stefan G. Meyer described his style as “the closest among Arab writers to Latin American magical realism” and characterized Barakat as “perhaps the most prominent prose writer writing in Arabic today.” Given his complex style and his application of techniques drawn from classical Arabic literature, his influence was akin to that of the “Neo-classicists.”