In accordance with our meta agreement to have topic challenges and a later meta agreement to have topic challenges lasting for two months and overlapping by one month, it is time to announce the March–April 2021 topic challenge.
Based on the number of votes in the proposals thread (+5), the third topic challenge of 2021 will be the Kurdish classic
Mem û Zîn (Mem and Zin).
What's a topic challenge?
See the meta posts linked above, and also this main meta post. In short, during March–April 2021 we should all try to read Mem û Zîn.
Participation is not obligatory in any sense, but those who participate will be forever remembered in the annals of our history. And of course it goes without saying that questions about other works are more than welcome during those months too; they just won't count as part of this topic challenge.
How can I take part?
By getting hold of Mem û Zîn, in any language you like, and asking good questions about it. These questions should be tagged with mem-and-zin and ahmad-khani and kurdish-literature, and other tags if appropriate. We'll keep a list of all such questions in an answer to this meta post.
Below is Rand al'Thor's original presentation of this topic challenge, which contains some useful links:
This story is one of the most important works of Kurdish literature - a language group so far entirely unrepresented on our site. It's a Romeo & Juliet style romantic tragedy, written by Ahmad Khani in 1692 based on oral traditions. It's been adapted into a film (in Turkish) and a TV series.
- Being such an old story, it has an English translation freely available online.
- Also freely available online is an entire book about the story, containing various studies and analyses, uploaded to the Kurdish Institute Library.
What's next?
- The January–February 2021 topic challenge, Theodor Fontane, and the February–March one, The Lusiads, are currently ongoing.
- Vote here for the next topic challenge, or propose your own in an answer there!
