This study explores how subjectivity has been represented in a selection of Sorani Kurdish novels from Iraqi and Iranian Kurdistan that were published in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Due to the statelessness and suffering of the Kurds caused by the political and cultural oppression, the first Sorani Kurdish novel emerged as late as 1961 and yet only established itself towards the end of the century. Within such an acute context, the novel became a tool in the hands of Kurdish authors which they utilised to preserve and promote Kurdish identity, culture and language. With the establishment of cultural centres and publishing houses in diaspora during the 1980s, the establishment of a quasi-independent Kurdish region in Iraq in 1991, and the Iranian government’s easing of publication in Kurdish by the mid-1980, the Sorani Kurdish novelists seized the opportunity to redefine the relationship between political commitment and aesthetics and to consider the possibilities for an analysis of different forms of subjectivity. All the twenty-first century Sorani Kurdish novels examined in this research have discarded, to one degree or another, the realist mode of writing which dominated the Sorani Kurdish novel until the early 1990s. That is, experimentation with new modes of writing and narrative techniques are the common feature of the novels examined here. By carrying out a close reading within a contextual framework and by drawing on Mikhail M. Bakhtin’s theory of the novel, narratology, and theories of subjectivity, this study intends to illustrate the newly emergent modes of wriring and discourses in selected twenty-first century Sorani novels and their implications for the representation of reality and subjectivity. This study demonstrates that the Kurdish novelists from both Iraq and Iran all focus their attention on recent events, relevant to each region, and how they changed the ways subjectivity could be imagined and depicted. The more modernist and postmodernist in form and narration the selected novels are, the more fragmented and passive subjectivity is; and the society that is represented in these novels appears to have separated from its high values and ideals.

This thesis explores the emergence and development of the Iraqi Kurdish novel between 1970 and 2011, aiming to demonstrate that it engages with political discourses, and that the political situation influenced the themes and structural development of the novel. It will seek to elucidate why, when we examine the history of Kurdish literature over the last fifty years, the first point that may attract our attention is its emergence from the political events. Based on this notion the current study has been divided into three historical phases; 1970-1991, 1991-2003 and 2003-2011. A chapter has been dedicated to each stage, examining two novels from each period, one from the Soranî and one from the Behdînî dialect. Chapter Two discusses the historical background of Iraqi Kurdistan and its influence on the emergence of the novel. Chapter One has been allocated to establishing the methodological background of the textual analysis, which has adopted Lucien Goldmann’s genetic structuralist theory. Such a theory, I will argue, proves helpful in order to discover the link between socio-political conditions and the form of literary works within a society, as Goldmann himself tried to do through his theoretical approach. Chapter Six discusses the results of the study. The thesis demonstrates how the political situation has formed the Iraqi Kurdish novel in terms of both formal and thematic structures, examining the notions of both the ’hero’ and the ‘world vision’ in the novels. It explores the reasons behind the dominant tragic world vision in the first stage, the hopeless worldview in the second, and the self-critical vision in the third phase. In addition, it examines the problematic nature of the hero in the novels, from their emergence until 2011.

This thesis seeks to examine the Kurdish novel, The Flower of Shoran (1998) by Iranian Kurdish author, ‘Atā Nahāyi in the context of Kurdish identity search and nationalism and struggle to build a nation state. Considering that the setting of the novel is between the two World Wars which is arguably the most critical phase of Kurdish nationalism, the present study tries to give a brief overview of the historical events that shaped and oriented Kurdish nationalism. Subsequently, Nahāyi’s perspective on the question of Kurdish identity and nationalism in Iran which are the underlying themes of the novel is discussed. Also a detailed summary has been provided along with the translation of the first two chapters of the novel to illustrate how a fairly successful Kurdish novel such as The Flower of Shoran has dealt with the Kurdish question of identity and nationalism in the context of Kurds' struggle for autonomy and recognition as a distinct nation. / text