This study explores the early prose work of the Syrian-Kurdish novelist and poet Salim Barakat (b. 1951). Containing elements of both the realistic and fantastic, his narrative texts center on the life and culture of the Kurds in the 1950s and 1960s, the growing pressure exerted by Arab nationalism on the Kurdish minority in Syria, and how the Kurds have responded to the political reality. Drawing on methods of modern literary studies and following a dialogical structure, Burgi Roos analyzes the construction of Kurdish identity and the deconstruction of Kurdish nationalism.