Dawn

April 1, 2019
Imprisoned Kurdish lawyer and progressive politician Demirtaş delivers a closely observed series of portraits of lives oppressed. Demirtaş, held in a high-security prison in Turkey, describes his surroundings as a kind of city of intellectuals who ought to be out serving their country--but there's the rub, for that country, in his case, is not the one that holds him captive but the independent Kurdistan of his hopes. In his introduction, he argues that literature and politics serve the same purpose for the audience, namely, to inspire. Whether readers will in fact be inspired by his grimly matter-of-fact stories is an open question, but certainly they convey the essential terror of living in a system under which violence is a given and families are often separated: A young housecleaner is swept up in a demonstration and beaten and jailed; a prodigal daughter reads in a dying father's notebook that "every stone on the path to loneliness has been laid by nobody else but you"; a young man, shot in the head, contemplates his passing: "My grave rests in Semra's bloodshot eyes, hers beneath a tree in the village." Naturally, some of Demirtaş' stories are set in prison, where he notes the apparent paradox that though the courtyard is tiny, it is infinite, open to the endless circling of its trudging inhabitants, not just the human ones, but the "ants and the spiders with which we share it." And in one ironic piece addressed to a letter-reading committee of prison censors, he darts from memory to memory, evoking his father's way of making a poetry of foul curses and a childhood friend's return in a dream to remind him of the smell of pastirma, "that spicy meat that comes in thin slices"--the stuff, in other words, of the stories he feels compelled to write from behind the walls. A welcome debut collection. One hopes for more--and that Demirtaş will not be silenced by his captors.

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April 8, 2019
Demirtas (Seher) explores resistance, persistence, and perseverance in modern-day Turkey in these 12 perceptive stories. Demirtas, a former Turkish parliament member for the People’s Democratic Party, has been controversially imprisoned since 2016 for spreading propaganda, and writes in the collection’s introduction, “What readers or voters expect from the writer and politician are, in essence, the same: to be inspired.” Through such characters as Nazan, a mechanic’s son; Bêkes, a student who has won the chance to attend a conference in America; and an unnamed lawyer traveling across country by bus, Demirtas constructs lively personalities who envision a greater, more open Turkey. Throughout, Demirtas finds optimism in dire situations. In the collection’s standout, “It’s Not What You Think,” one man’s failed suicide attempt becomes a spiritual moment of revelation after he walks to the local market with a new sense of meaning: “this ray of light completed a journey that had lasted millions of years. Who could have known when it set out all that time ago that it would turn the rest of my life upside down?” Demirtas shares an optimistic vision for Turkey’s future with these neatly constructed, affecting stories of dreamers from all walks of life.

April 1, 2019
Kurdish author Demirtas, former cochair of the Peoples' Democratic Party, wrote this first story collection in the high-security Turkish facility in which he is still imprisoned for his political beliefs. His visceral tales expose unfathomable darkness with an unshowy, fable-like straightforwardness as the book nonetheless subtly arcs toward hope. "The Mermaid" is narrated by a young girl who fled Syria by boat in darkness and never saw the sea from the outside. In another tale, Demirtas captures the ways life both goes on and ceases in the aftermath of mass violence. Warmth creeps in with stories of a bus driver's practical joke that's repaid years later with kindness, and a bittersweet recollection of boyhood innocence. In "As Lonely as History," a successful architect discovers a shocking backstory behind the novels she loves most. Endnotes explaining the stories' proper nouns add to the book's appeal as an entry into Turkish contemporary life and literature. Already a publishing sensation with 200,000 copies sold in Turkey alone, Demirtas' empathic collection shines the light that its title promises.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)

November 15, 2018

A Turkish human rights lawyer, cochair of the People's Democratic Party, and pro-Kurdish MP, Demirtas has been imprisoned since November 2016. His first work of fiction collects 12 stories dedicated to "all murdered women and victims of violence," whose voices are embodied here. Next in Sarah Jessica Parker's new imprint.

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