Adel Karasholi

Adel Karasholi (born October 15, 1936 in Damascus ) is a Syrian - German writer and translator. He writes in Arabic and German.

Life

Adel Karasholi comes from a Kurdish family. Already in his youth he published poems , beginning with love poems later in the tradition of Arab folk art, and founded a magazine for art and literature in Damascus in 1953 , which was financed by his father but already with the first edition by the Syrian government because of so-called "subversive statements" was banned again. He worked in a printing company and as a newspaper and radio editor (among other things, he directed a student program on Radio Damascus ). In 1957 he was accepted as the youngest member of the Arab Writers' Union. After this was banned in 1959 , Karasholi emigrated after two years of exile in various countries, including a. in Lebanon , to Germany . This was followed by stays in various places in the GDR and in West Germany. In 1961 he finally settled in Leipzig . He studied at the Institute of Literature "Johannes R. Becher" (literature) and at the Higher School of Theater (Theater Studies), where he in 1970 with a thesis on the theater of Bertolt Brecht doctorate . From 1968 to 1993 he was a lecturer at the University of Leipzig . In 2004/2005 he took over the Chamisso poetics lectureship at the TU Dresden . He is married and now lives as a freelance writer in Leipzig.

Adel Karasholi is a writer of poetry and essays ; he writes in Arabic and, since the mid-1960s, also in German . He also translates narrative prose , poems and dramas from both languages. His works try to build a bridge between literature and poetry from Occident and Orient . He deals intensively with a problem of our time: what and where is home .

Adel Karasholi had been a member of the GDR Writers' Association since 1980 . He has been a member of the Association of German Writers (VS) since 1990 and of the PEN Center Germany since 1992 . In 1992 he received German citizenship.

Works in German

• Like silk from Damascus , Verlag Volk und Welt, Berlin 1968 (translated from Arabic into German)
• Embrace of the meridians , Mitteldeutscher Verlag, Halle / Leipzig 1978
• Brecht in an Arab perspective , Berlin 1982
• My lover is coming , Berlin 1983
• At home in a foreign country , Mitteldeutscher Verlag, Halle / Leipzig 1984
• (with Joachim Jansong ) The Earth Vineyard , Leipzig 1986
• If it weren't for Damascus (poems). A1 Verlag, Munich 1992, ISBN 3-927743-07-0 .
• So spoke Abdulla (poetry). A1 Verlag, Munich 1995, ISBN 3-927743-21-6 .

music

The work Daheim in der Fremde was musically adapted in 2016 by Bernd Franke as a scene for baritone , speaker, oud , percussion and orchestra based on Karasholi's texts as half-hour vocal music for individual voices.

Anthologies and literary journals

• Contribution in: How far is Palestine? Leipzig: Passage-Verlag, 2003. ISBN 3-932900-72-3 .
• At home in a foreign country , in: West-eastern tight rope dance , Trio, Bonn 2005, ISBN 3-00-016509-6 .
• Ralph Grüneberger / Society for contemporary poetry (ed.): New poetry album , issue 1/2007.

Co-publications

• Thinking about Germany 1. Talking. With lectures by Günter Grass, Rolf Hochhuth, Henry Marx, Adel Karasholi, Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker , Verlag der Nation, Berlin 1990, ISBN 978-3-37300-417-2 .
• Ernst, Christoph (Red.) U. a .: And we lost the language (Jean Amery). Writer in exile. In it: A. Karasholi: Foreigners out .... , Evang. Church Berlin Brandenburg (Ed.), Berlin Verlag, Berlin 1990
• Lerke von Saalfeld (Ed.): I have chosen a foreign language. Foreign writers write in German , Bleicher Verlag, 2002 (Psychosozial-Verlag 1998), ISBN 978-3-88350-617-3 .

Prices

• Art Prize of the City of Leipzig (1985)
• Adelbert von Chamisso Prize (1992)

Translations

• Alfred Farag : Al-Tabrisi and his servant Kuffa , Berlin 1976
• Mahmud Darwisch : Where you have been and where you are , Munich 2004
• Mahmud Darwisch: The dice player. Poem , Munich 2009

literature

• Uta Aifan: Images of Arabs. On the work of German-Arab cross-border authors of the present . In it: (Chapter 4) From the denial of the exotic to the lyrical synthesis Adel Karasholis , Verlag Shaker, Aachen 2003, ISBN 978-3-83221-788-4 .
• Arig Saleh: Reception of Arab Migration Literature in Germany. A study using the example of Syrian authors living in Germany . In it: Syriac-German-language poetry - Adel Karasholi as an example , Free University of Berlin , Inaugural dissertation, Berlin 2011, pp. 184–223
• Lutz Richter: In conversation with Adel Karasholi. In: German as a Foreign Language , Literary Special 1986, Verlag Enzyklopädie, Leipzig 1986. ISSN  0323-3766 . Pp. 96-103

Web links

• Literature by and about Adel Karasholi in the catalog of the German National Library
• http://www.fremd-sein.de/autoren/kara_1.html
• http://www.culturebase.net/artist.php?826
• http://www.karasholi.com/

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Arig Saleh, dissertation, p. 185
2. ↑ Arig Saleh: Reception Arab immigrant literature in Germany. In: Free University of Berlin. December 8, 2010, accessed March 11, 2020 . 
3. ↑ At home in a foreign country: Scene for baritone, speaker, oud, percussion and orchestra Bernd Franke, Adel Karasholi in the catalog of the German National Library