2025 - Kholoud Charaf
Kholoud Charaf (b. 1981) is a Druze poet and novelist, born in the village of Al-Mojaimr in southern Syria. She is a member of PEN Germany and remains dedicated to her literary journey in exile in Europe.
Passa Porta has the honour to host her for several months in the framework of ICORN (International Cities of Refuge Network), a programme for writers at risk supported by the City of Brussels and VUB.
Kholoud’s writing bridges the gap between personal memory and the collective experience of war. Her artistic practice is deeply informed by her engagement with contemporary art, notably through her work with museums in Warsaw and Krakow.
Her literary career has been marked by significant international recognition: her debut poetry collection, Rufat Farasha (‘The Remains of the Butterfly’, 2016), has been translated into ten languages, and her travelogue, Rihlat al-awda ila al-jabal (‘Journey Back to the Mountain’) was awarded the prestigious Ibn Battuta Prize in 2019. Her novel, Yawmiyyat la sha'na li biha (‘A Diary That Doesn't Concern Me’), has been nominated for major literary awards, including the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF), and is forthcoming in German (Ein Tagebuch, das nicht mit mir zu tun hat) with Pfaueninsel Verlag in Berlin.
Currently, Kholoud is working on a new novel, Lu’bat al-nard (‘The Dice Game’), which employs stream-of-consciousness narrative techniques and draws on Carl Jung’s shadow theory to examine the moral collapse of a world fractured by war and irrationality. In addition to her prose, she writes poetry in Arabic, German, and English.