Whispering Walls

Choman Hardi is the author of critically-acclaimed books in the fields of poetry, academia, and translation. She is an educator, poet, and scholar whose work is informed by an intersectional approach to inequality, renowned for her pioneering work on issues of gender and education.Choman returned home after twenty-six years of displacement, to teach English and initiate gender studies at the American University of Iraq- Sulaimani (AUIS). She founded the Center for Gender and Development Studies (CGDS) there. Under her leadership, CGDS initiated the first interdisciplinary gender studies minor in Iraq, and is developing gender studies resources in Kurdish and Arabic, funded by the European Union. She is a Co-Director of the GCRF Gender, Justice and Security Hub, on which she is researching about the role of institutions and practices on the construction of masculinity.Since 2010, poems from Choman's first English collection, Life for Us (Bloodaxe, 2004) have been studied by secondary school students as part of the English GCSE curriculum in the UK. Choman's second collection, Considering the Women (Bloodaxe, 2015), was given a recommendation by the Poetry Book Society, and shortlisted for the prestigious Forward Prize for Best Collection. It was also translated into French in 2020. A selection of Choman's poems was published in Italian in 2017.Funded by the Leverhulme Trust, Choman's post-doctoral research, Gendered Experiences of Genocide: Anfal Survivors in Kurdistan-Iraq (Routledge, 2011) was named a UK Core Title by the Yankee Book Peddler. Her translation of Sherko Bekas's Butterfly Valley (ARC Publishing) won a PEN Translates Award. Publications & Prizes: Life for Us (Bloodaxe, 2004)Considering the Women (Bloodaxe, 2015)Gendered Experiences of Genocide: Anfal Survivors in Kurdistan-Iraq (Routledge, 2011)Forward Prize for Best Collection, ShortlistedPEN Translates Award, Award Winner

"Full of urgent resonance for our present moment, Choman Hardi's Whispering Walls is about a charismatic Kurdish family who confront their ghosts in the tense weeks leading up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The novel travels between London and Kurdistan, past and future, as each sibling grapples with a secret wound - a multilingual poet who loses her fluency in the face of love, a tender father who is haunted by the sister he failed, a journalist who must confront the truth in his own family. A book that is written with the same sharp observation, fresh language and moral imagination of Hardi's award-winning poetry, it asks a question we all must consider; how can we grapple with the tragedies of the past as we try to fashion a better future? Not only is Choman Hardi a brilliant poet, she is also a great novelist. I want everyone I know to read her book." Catherine Davidson, Poet and Novelist; "More than anything, Whispering Walls is a novel about siblings, and how, even though we grow up in the same family, our lives unfold in distinct narratives. Choman Hardi, with compassion and unflinching honesty, tells the story of five siblings in a choral narrative that succeeds in being both deeply intimate and a chronicle of the land and people who have shaped them. A compelling reminder that behind complex national stories are the complex dramas taking place on the level of the family." Shaun Levin, Artist and Author; "A rare and fascinating glimpse of the dangerous past as seen through the eyes of Lana, a young poet, and her two brothers juggling a life in London and a Kurdish dream." Romesh Gunesekera, Writer