Ktêbhên - an Online Bookstore for Kurdish Books

What do we want?
Spreading access to books, promoting reading and building a bridge between Kurdistan and Europe.

We receive books from various publishers in Iraqi Kurdistan, where Kurdish literature can be published uncensored. From Berlin we can then distribute the orders through postal services to all over Germany and Europe.

Our bookstore will initially offer the following topics:

Learning Kurdish: Various dictionaries and textbooks to learn a language that is banned in some countries.

Literature: Kurdish classics, recent novels and poetry by authors such as Bachtyar Ali, Sherko Bekas, Sherzad Hassan, Choman Hardi.

Children's books: Children's books for all ages. Crucial to help children in learning their mother tongue, to getting closer to their own culture and not losing it.

Philosophy: Various Kurdish magazines, essays as well as translations of important classical and contemporary authors of philosophy.

History: Books telling the history of Kurdistan.

The bookstore is intended for anyone interested in Kurdistan and current Kurdish topics.

Firstly, because it is a project for the freedom of culture. Books are important mediators: between people, cultures, places and languages. Because for several years many Kurdish people have fled to Europe and are today deprived of the right to their language. Last but not least, Kurdish is a threatened language in various countries of the Middle East and it is in our power to ensure its subsistence.

There is a lot of work behind the website. Part of the money will be used to remunerate the web designers.
The rest of the money will serve to finance the book delivery business. We are planning to order new books from Iraqi Kurdistan every three months. the delivery has to go a long way and the people who work for it have to be paid fairly. The books also have their prices and our orders support the publishers and authors of the Kurdistan. We have to pay them in advance and for that we need a little capital.
As far as storage is concerned, we need a good space in Berlin where the books can be stored protected from humidity while waiting to be shipped to our customers. For the time being we have set up a warehouse at home but we will eventually have to rent a room over time. We need support for that!