Agri Ismaïl is a Kurdish author based in Sweden who has worked as a corporate lawyer in London, Dubai, and Iraqi Kurdistan.

His work has been published in The White Review, The Rumpus, Guernica, Asymptote, and The Lifted Brow among other places. He is on the editorial board of the Swedish journal Glänta and has been an assistant editor at the British visual literary journal Short Fiction.

His piece Haunted Home won the 2016 Stack award for best non-fiction, and he was longlisted for the 2017/2018 Galley Beggar Press Short Story Prize for The Outpost. His debut novel Hyper was published in spring 2024 by Chatto & Windus (UK) and Albert Bonniers Förlag (SE).

Agent: Erik Larsson

Nominated for the August Prize 2024!

A family saga set against the backdrop of the 2008 financial crisis, spanning two generations and three continents, HYPER is the story of a Kurdish family torn apart by migration. 

When Rafiq Kermanj, founder of the Kurdish Communist Party, is forced to flee Tehran for London with his conservative wife Xezal and three children, they suffer the shame of penury and migration layered on Kurdish statelessness.  

Agri Ismaïl’s unforgettable debut novel follows the lives of Rafiq’s children and their increasingly desperate relationship to money. Siver, the only daughter, escapes into an unhappy marriage in Baghdad before fleeing to raise her daughter as a single mother in Dubai. Mohammed, the eldest, stays in London to climb the unforgiving ladder of the financial sector. Laika, the youngest, retreats into a contactless digital life, designing the trading algorithms that will ultimately prove his downfall in a condo near Wall Street.

The siblings are so distant from one another that they no longer even share the same language: Siver’s world is presented in sparse fragments of contemporary auto-fiction, freely jumping from past to present; Mohammed’s in a hysterical realism reflecting London after the stock market crash; and Laika’s in a kinetic prose that emulates the speed and rhythms of the internet, a new topic always a click away.

At once a love letter to the system novel and a subversion of the family saga, Hyper uses the unsettled nature of the Kurdish diaspora to capture the dislocations of life under capitalism.

REVIEWS AND ENDORSEMENTS

"A hell of an accomplishment from an author who looks to be at the start of a brilliant career. A bitter yet compassionate tour de force."
- Kirkus, starred review 

“Ismaïl’s characterizations of all three siblings are deliciously perceptive and painfully tense. Cutting and self-assured, this heralds the arrival of a thrilling new voice in the vein of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Zadie Smith.”
- Publishers Weekly

“It’s a brilliant conceit, and this is a book of big, heady ideas: how 20th-century concepts of communism and solidarity have been run through the digital shredder of the 21st century; how technological change has made refugees out of all of us, as we hide our true selves from the digital panopticon; how tyrannies both political and personal can be infinitely strengthened by the endless freedom the modern world provides.”
- The Guardian 

“I would be surprised if HYPER is not nominated for several debut awards as well as the August Prize this year. Rarely has a Swedish debut novel been so tightly narrated with a clear idea, without ever losing the human perspective on the characters. With precision, Agri Ismaïl depicts how the siblings are all trapped in the capitalist system and how money affects their dreams and desires down to the smallest detail. I am deeply impressed by this family portrait, that manages to encompass both capital, identity, exile, and humanity.”
- Borås Tidning 

“An intertwined swan song over our suicidal, capitalist present day.”
- Göteborgs-Posten

“Lost myself in "Hyper" by @magnitizdat This is a NOVEL in the truest sense. Ambitious, epic, heartfelt, all of it. An emotional tale of three siblings and their struggles to be successful in the modern world, about being an immigrant, about living up to your parents' expectations, about family dynamics, grief, loyalty, guilt (...) but also this riveting journey into the financial crisis from the view of bankers in London to hackers in New York to single mothers in Dubai. Spanning over continents and generations. This is some of the smartest and most interesting storytelling to come out of Scandinavia in a long while. I was blown away.”
- Fredrik Backman, author of A Man Called Ove

PUBLISHERS’ STATEMENTS

"HYPER is a novel about exile – and about money. Agri Ismaïl's impressive, timely debut is shaped by the realities of our globalised world; through the fate of two generations of a Kurdish family, he explores the flows of people and the flows of capital. In doing so, Ismaïl proves to be a great literary talent with a voice all his own, who has succeeded in writing a captivating, beautifully crafted novel with fascinating characters."
- Sarah Houtermans, Rowohlt

“A systems novel, an immigrant novel, traces of DeLillo, Franzen? HYPER by Agri Ismaïl is a profound exploration of a family fractured not only by physical distance but also by the crushing weight of political exile and the relentless forces of capitalism. Getting to know Rafiq and Xezal, Mohammed, Siver and Laika, we are timely reminded of the resilience and courage demanded of us all to hold on to the bonds that connect us as humans – including the bonds that make up the greater ‘us’ in today’s world, where modernity’s insatiable demands seem to be able to erode the very connections that define even our humanity. For Bonnier Norsk Forlag, it is a great honour to bring this deeply resonant and contemporary reflection on the human condition to Norwegian readers.”
- Marius Hjeldnes, Bonnier Norsk