Jan Dost, born in 1966, is a native of Kobani in the Aleppo region of Syria. A student of natural sciences at the University of Aleppo (1985-89), he embarked on a career in journalism in the roles of reporter and editor, currently for the Kurdistan Chronicle (published in English in Erbil, Iraq) He is editor-in-chief of the Arabic-language magazine Kurdistan.
Jan Dost has published five novels in Kurdish and eleven in Arabic (as well as four volumes of poetry). Translations of his fiction have appeared in Spanish, Turkish, Arabic, Kurdish, Polish, Persian, and Italian. Almost all of his Arabic novels have appeared in Kurdish and vice versa. His Kurdish novel Mirnåme (2008), for instance, appeared in Turkish, and Persian; the Arabic novel ‘Ashiq al-mutarjim (2013) has appeared in Italian, Kurdish, and Turkish; the Arabic novel Bas akhdar yughadir Halab (2019) has been translated into Spanish and Kurdish. Safe Corridor is his first novel to appear in English.
Jan Dost has received numerous awards: in Syria (Short Story Prize, 1992); in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (Hussein Arif Award for Creativity, 2014; Mem u Zin Literature Festival Award, 2021); in Germany (Kurdish Poetry Prize, 2012); and in Austria (Sharafnama Award for Kurdish Culture, 2021). He has also translated literary works from Kurdish and Persian into Arabic, and from Arabic into Kurdish, and has participated in translation workshops as well as speaking at conferences and book fairs. Since 2000, Jan Dost has resided in Germany and is a German citizen. His most recent work in Arabic is al-Asir al-faransawi (2022).