Kader Abdolah

Kader Abdolah is one of the descendants of Mirza Abu'l-Qasem Qa'em-Maqam, the Iranian politician during the Qajar period who was also affiliated with art and literature.

Kader Abdolah had for long wished of becoming an author. He used his political passion to begin his career after the Islamic revolution in 1979 by writing articles in the left political newspapers.

In the 1980s, he wrote two novels which were published illegally because of the political constraints: What are the Kurds saying? and Kurdistan after the resistance party.

When he immigrated to the Netherlands, he felt as if political issues were no longer relevant to his life and he fell into a state of depression because he had thought of political activities as the essence of his life. Learning Dutch and to write in the language is therefore described by him as a political tool for fighting. Literature had turned into the incentive for a new fight.[1]

Kader Abdolah studied physics in Arak College of Science (today's Arak university) in Arak, Iran and graduated in 1977. After graduation he served his mandatory military service at Iranian Navy in Bandar Pahlavi (today's Bandar-e-Anzali) During the revolution he joined the left-wing movement opposing the Shah – and later the Khomeini – regimes. He fled to the Netherlands as a political refugee in 1988. In 2006 he was writer in residence at Leiden University. Today he lives in Delft, writing under a pseudonym composed of the names of two executed friends.

Het huis van de moskee (The House of the Mosque) catapulted Abdolah onto the Dutch bestseller lists. In 2007. it was voted second best Dutch novel ever in the Netherlands in an online survey organized by NRC Handelsblad and NPS.[2] The English translation was released worldwide in January 2010.

• 1993 – De adelaars
• 1995 – De meisjes en de partizanen
• 1997 – De reis van de lege flessen
• 1998 – Mirza
• 2000 – Spijkerschrift (English trans.2006 "My Father's Notebook")
• 2001 – De koffer
• 2001 – Een tuin in zee
• 2002 – Kélilé en Demné
• 2002 – Sophia's droë vrugte
• 2003 – Portretten en een oude droom
• 2003 – Karavaan
• 2005 – Het huis van de moskee (The House of the Mosque)[3]
• 2008 – De boodschapper: een vertelling / de Koran: een vertaling. A two volume set: De boodschapper: een vertelling ('The Messenger: a narration') about the life of the prophet Mohammed, and de Koran: een vertaling ('The Qur'an: a translation'), Abdolah's Dutch translation of the Qur'an
• 2011 – De koning
• 2011 – De kraai (Kader Abdolah)
• 2014 – Papegaai vloog over de IJssel
• 2016 – Salam Europa!
• 2018 – Het pad van de gele slippers

• E. du Perronprijs of 2000 for his novel Spijkerschrift.[4]
• Knight in the Order of the Netherlands Lion (Dutch: Ridder in de Orde van de Nederlandse Leeuw) in 2000.[5]
• Knight in the French Order of Arts and Literature (French: Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres) in 2008.[5][6]
• Honorary doctor at the University of Groningen in 2009.[7]
• Invitation to write the 2011 Boekenweekgeschenk, a gift (De Kraai) to buyers of Dutch books during the Boekenweek.[8]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Kader Abdolah.

• Kader Abdolah at UC Berkeley: Literature as Resistance: Role of Clandestine Literature in Dictatorships like Iran
• "Kader Abdolah – Biography". Nederlands Literair Productie- en Vertalingenfonds (Foundation for the Production and Translation of Dutch Literature, NLPVF). 6 February 2009. Archived from the original on 27 September 2011. Retrieved 19 March 2011.
• G.J. van Bork (2004). "Abdolah, Kader" (in Dutch). Digitale Bibliotheek voor de Nederlandse Letteren (Digital Library for Dutch Literature, DBNL). Retrieved 19 March 2011.
• "Kader Abdolah" (in Dutch). Digitale Bibliotheek voor de Nederlandse Letteren (Digital Library for Dutch Literature, DBNL). Retrieved 19 March 2011.