How a Single Novel Opened a New Chapter for the Zazaki Literature?

Deniz Gunduz is one of the authors who wrote a novel for the first time in Zazaki literature. "Kilama Pepûgî" (The Song of the Cuckoo) is the name of Deniz Gûndûz's novel. This is the very first novel in Kirmancki/Zazaki literature. Vartan Publishing House published this novel in Ankara in the year 2000. Its second edition was published by Vate Publishing House in 2024.

Avaşîn Yılmaz

In his novel, Deniz Gunduz particularly portrays the events experienced by Kurdish and Armenian societies within the framework of real history using modern novelistic techniques.

Harûn Bozkurt, one of the writers in Zazaki of Kurdish, speaks about the novel Kilama Pepûgî in an analysis as follows:

"Deniz Gunduz takes elements of his own culture and language and reshapes them in his novel. He is both aware of the rules of his language and skillfully applies these linguistic rules in accordance with the action of the events in his work.

In his novel, the author particularly portrays the events experienced by Kurdish and Armenian societies within the framework of real history using modern novelistic techniques. The structural elements of the novel were analyzed in different sections of the study. In these sections, the novel's identity, point of view and narrator, depiction of events, time setting, environmental/sensorial setting, and character framework were analyzed from all aspects. In the work, the characters of the novel were analyzed under the headings of main character, norm character, card character, and background character, as identified by W. J. Harvey."

Additionally, researcher and writer Pinar Yıldız says the following about "Kilama Pepûgî":

"This first Kirmancki novel was written at the beginning of the millennium, at a very late period. Compared to both the Western novel and the Eastern novel, it has a delayed force. Between this novel and the first Kurmanji novel, there is also a gap of approximately seventy-five years.

In this novel, there are some problems in terms of narration and composition, but this novel is not merely a sequence of events. In this voluminous novel, the author successfully utilized folk expressions and the language of the people. In terms of expression and language, the novel possesses a literary style. Furthermore, the descriptions of places and daily life are successful.

Although the characters are not very strong, they are not very bad either. 'Brave' men and those who 'seek revenge' have left their mark on this novel. Women remain in the shadow of these men; only a few women appear as characters within the novel. The subject of this novel is built upon historical events. However, the author's own voice does not rise too loud inside the novel to lecture or guide the reader. The author mostly wanted to present the novel from an objective point of view.

Although this novel is not built upon a strong background and novelistic tradition, as a first example, it gives hope for the Kirmancki novel. Today, among Kirmancki novels, there are still some that have only reached the stage of this first novel. The new window that Gunduz opened for Kirmancki literature twenty years ago has today, twenty years later, led to fourteen novels."

About Deniz Gunduz

Deniz Gunduz was born in 1976 in the village of Canesera in Gimgim (Varto). He spent his childhood and early youth in Gimgim. He studied in the village of Uskira in Gimgim until middle school, and completed high school in Bitlis.

In 1994, he began studying Art History at Anadolu University in Eskişehir; later, he changed his major and graduated from the Department of Sociology at the same university in 2018. In 1996, he served as the İzmir branch representative of Komal Publishing House, thereby initiating his career in publishing and writing.

In 2000, he published his own—and the first Kirmancki—novel, Kilama Pepûgî. In 2003, through the Kurdish Cultural Foundation of Stockholm, he studied Kirmancki for a term at Uppsala University. In the same year, he returned from Sweden and established Vate Publishing House in Istanbul for Kirmancki publications. To date, more than 120 books have been published under his editorship at this publishing house. He also served as the owner and editor-in-chief of Vate Magazine under the same institution, which recently published its 78th issue.

He taught Kirmancki courses for years both at this publishing house and in various institutions. In 2020, he graduated from the Institute of Living Languages at Mardin Artuklu University with his Master's thesis titled "Comparison of Avestan and Kirmancki (Zazaki): An Etymological Study". Since 2021, he has been a PhD student in the Department of Kurdish Language and Culture at the Institute of Social Sciences at Dicle University.

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