This study discusses the affirmation and negation of Orientalist tropes in Kae Bahar’s Letters from a Kurd. As novel by a London-based Iraqi Kurdish novelist, Letters from a Kurd exemplifies many of the issues which inform literary production in transnational and diasporic contexts. While references to recent studies of world literature by David Damrosch, Franco Moretti, Pascale Casanova, Pheng Cheah, and Rebecca Walkowitz provide a framework for discussing and understanding the conditions of the novel’s production and circulation, Edward Said’s critique of Orientalism provides us with a critical standpoint for discussing the novelist’s representation of the Kurdish society. The findings of the study suggest that, despite the demands of the global market and the Orientalist history of the English language, the novel provides a nuanced representation of the Kurdish society by debunking Orientalist fixities stereotypically attributed to Middle Eastern communities.
