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Average rating4.7
Best Book of the Year – Bloomberg News A resilient Turkish writer’s inspiring account of his imprisonment that provides crucial insight into political censorship amidst the global rise of authoritarianism. The destiny I put down in my novel has become mine. I am now under arrest like the hero I created years ago. I await the decision that will determine my future, just as he awaited his. I am unaware of my destiny, which has perhaps already been decided, just as he was unaware of his. I suffer the pathetic torment of profound helplessness, just as he did. Like a cursed oracle, I foresaw my future years ago not knowing that it was my own. Confined in a cell four meters long, imprisoned on absurd, Kafkaesque charges, novelist Ahmet Altan is one of many writers persecuted by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s oppressive regime. In this extraordinary memoir, written from his prison cell, Altan reflects upon his sentence, on a life whittled down to a courtyard covered by bars, and on the hope and solace a writer’s mind can provide, even in the darkest places.
Reviews with the most likes.
I had never heard of the author before and saw it was quite a short read so I thought why not give it a try. The book is way better than I initially thought it would be. It collects a handful of essays the author wrote in a prison in Turkey. He got arrested because of the coup that happened in Turkey a few years ago.
Some quotes of this book I really liked:
“The policeman next to me lit a cigarette, then held the packet out to me. I shook my head no, smiling. “I only smoke,” I said, “when I am nervous.”“My life will pass fighting invisible battles between two walls; I will survive hanging on to the branches of my own mind, at the edge of the abyss, and not giving in to the disorientating inebriety of weakness, even for a moment.”“I didn't only feel what he felt, however. Like Suskind's protagonist who steals others' scents, I took the young teacher's (fellow inmate) adventures and filled them with my own emotions to weave myself a dream cloak from his memories, a cloak in which I could wrap myself up and hide.”“A smell completely unknown to me made him think of “absolute happiness.” The smell of frozen seaweed, an isolated village, a walk in the snow, walking away from life...All those could lead to happiness. How could Brodsky and the village teacher, two people entirely unlike each other, roam around in different depths of life, take dissimilar paths and arrive at the same word, “happiness”? I wanted to understand this.”
This book is full of these wonderful thoughts and observations. If any of these quotes are to your liking then please read this gem of a book! It will be worth your time!