Salim Barakat is a Kurdish-Syrian writer, considered to be one of the most innovative poets and novelists writing in the Arabic language. He was brought up in Qamishli in northern Syria and spent most of his youth there. After living in Beirut and Cyprus, he moved to Sweden in 1999, where he now resides. A prolific writer, Barakat has published dozens of novels and collections of poetry. He is distinguished from his contemporaries for the innovative use of style and theme within his writing.