Ahmet Erkam’s Battığımız Bataklar; in which he brings out the different faces of pain; Rıdvan Hatun’s first book of unsettling stories, Billur Örüntüler; Paul Auster’s Baumgartner, which captures many lives; Yukio Mişima’s Satılık Hayat, a detective story full of absurd events; Violeta by Isabel Allende, the story of writer Violeta Del Valle; Erasmus’ Deliliğe Övgüsü, one of the most important representatives of humanism, and many more will be published by Can Yayınları in December 2023.
Ahmet Erkam / Battığımız Bataklar
Ahmet Erkam Saraç writes stories in which life breathes and breathes. He tells about the swamps of broken families, toxic relationships, abandoned children, irreplaceable losses.
…
Rıdvan Hatun / Billur Örüntüler
In his first book, Billur Örüntüler, Rıdvan Hatun tells about people groping in the dark trying to reach the light switch. There are big, unsettling narratives from small scenes of different worlds in these stories. You never know where the punch will come from.
…
Paul Auster / Baumgartner (trans. Seçkin Selvi)
Baumgartner is the story of Baumgartner, a seventy-one-year-old philosophy professor who is deeply saddened by the death of his beloved wife Anna and prepares to retire and retire from the world. Reflecting Paul Auster’s keen eye for the beauty in the smallest, most fleeting moments of an ordinary life and capturing many lives, Baumgartner is the author’s latest masterpiece.
…
Yukio Mishima / Satılık Hayat (trans. Devrim Çetin Güven)
After a failed suicide attempt, 27-year-old advertising copywriter Hanio Yamada puts his life up for sale by placing an advert in a local newspaper. He is soon sought after by various clients, but as his requests become increasingly bizarre, his life turns into a detective story full of absurd events.
…
Carys Davies / Batı (trans. Tülin Er)
Cy Bellman, an American settler and widowed father, is overcome by strong feelings of astonishment and fascination when he hears news: Giant animal bones from prehistoric times have been found in the deep swamps of Kentucky’s interior. Intrigued, Cy sets out to find out if there is any truth to the rumours that giant beasts still live, leaving his daughter Bess behind to fend for herself.
…
Isabel Allende / Violeta (trans. İnci Kut)
Violeta is not only the story of Violeta’s hundred years of life, filled with devastating heartbreak and passionate relationships, poverty and wealth, terrible losses and immense happiness, but also the story of her life shaped by the struggle for women’s rights, the rise and fall of tyrants, and ultimately not one but two pandemics, which witnessed a century of history. Telling the story of a woman whose unforgettable passion, determination and sense of humour led her through a lifetime of great changes, Allende once again leaves her readers with a saga that is both fascinating and touching.
…
This Month in Classics
Desiderius Erasmus / Deliliğe Övgü (trans. Şebnem Sunar)
Erasmus, one of the most important representatives of humanism, addresses all humanity through the mouth of the goddess of madness, who says “Who can represent me better than me?” in his masterpiece Deliliğe Övgü, the draft of which he prepared during his journey from Italy to England in the summer of 1509, then completed at the home of his friend Thomas More and dedicated it to him.
…
August Strindberg / Alacaklılar (trans. Zeynep Avcı)
In the play, which takes place in a boarding house room between a married couple and a man, Strindberg reveals what everyone knows about marriage and male-female relationships but cannot say out loud. The marriage of the writer Tekla and her painter husband Adolf is put to a serious test by the detailed questions asked by the strange guest Gustav in the next room. Alacaklılar is an important work, which Strindberg considered to be “my most mature work”, a short but long-lasting work.
