Hakan Günday, who has created a unique readership with his novels, brought together his stories published in various media, including magazines and book selections, in his book titled ‘Derz‘ and presented them to his readers. The meaning of “Derz” is the gap between wall stones or bricks filled with mortar and levelled by pulling a trowel over it.
On the cover of the book, readers are greeted by the silhouette of a child flying a kite on the edge of a cliff. The book also includes pages from his fanzine Anakara Seyir Defteri. Known also for the one-word names he gives to his novels, Günday’s story book Derz contains 34 stories written with different techniques. Stories with interesting subjects and titles such as ‘İmparatorluk Özel Kalem Müdürlüğü’nün Dikkatine’, ‘Dünyanın İlk Klon devlet Başkanı Ve İç Burkan Dramı’, ‘Siyaset Akademisi 12. Dönem Sözlü Sınavı’, Doğmadan Önce Yapılması Gereken 10 Şey’, ‘Mahşerin Dört Atlısından Biri Olan Ölümün Atını Çalıp Kaçan İki Delinin Son Sözleri’ and ‘Toplum İnşası Ve Mühendisliğinde Bir Yalıtım Malzemesi Olarak İnsan Eti Kullanımına İlişkin Klavuz’ draw attention.
Published in 2000, the story of Kinyas ve Kayra, the famous novel about the violent lives of two Turkish youths who start their lives in Africa, also conveys the anatomy of a murder. The story begins with the words “I didn’t tell this story to anyone, not even to Kayra” and continues fluently through the mouth of Kinyas. Günday, who is also known as a screenwriter, sometimes makes a city and a man, a patient and a doctor, and sometimes a mother and her child talk in the stories he writes with the dialogue technique. Using a simple and fluent language, Günday draws the reader into gripping stories in both his stories and novels, while sincerely drawing the human map of the characters. The decoration of the book with fanzines adds a different colour. Derz gives the book the air of a selection of Günday’s stories woven with ironic and political themes. The author concludes his last story in the book, “Safkan İnsan”, with the following sentence; “Let whoever writes whatever they want! The only place they will arrive by writing is the end of the page. That’s all.” Happy reading.
TITLE
Year of First Edition: 2023
Genre: Story
Author: Hakan Günday
