PALEWELL PRESS

Haydar Karatas is a Zaza Kurdish novelist, short story writer and activist writing in Turkish. Karatas was arrested as a student activist at 19 and spent 10 years in prison where he wrote several novels. All but one were confiscated. The one that accompanied him in his escape from prison was Butterfly of the Night. It was published by Iletisim Publishing in 2010 and sold over 200,000 copies. His second novel Secrets of the 12 Mountains was published in Turkish in 2012 and Ejma’s Dream followed in 2017. Karatas's writing has been compared to that of the great folk-literature giant Yasar Kemal and the keenness of the suffering in this book has been compared to Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath, and Sabatier’s The Safety Matches. Butterfly of the Night was published in German in 2018. Haydar lives in Switzerland with his wife and family.

In October 2021, Palewell Press published Butterfly of the Night translated from Turkish by Caroline Stockford.