"Aslı Erdoğan is an exceptionally perceptive and sensitive writer who always produces perfect literary texts."—Orhan Pamuk
"One volume of short stories, The Stone Building and Other Places has become a bestseller in Turkey."—The New York Times
"Beautifully written and honestly told, as tender as the tulip gardens of Istanbul and as brave as the human heart."—Elif Safak, author of The Forty Rules of Love
Three interconnected stories feature women whose lives have been interrupted by forces beyond their control. Exile, serious illness, or the imprisonment of one's beloved are each met with versions of strength and daring, while there is no undoing what fate has wrought. These atmospheric, introspective tales culminate in an experimental, multi-voiced novella, whose "stone building" is a metaphor for the various oppressive institutions—prisons, police headquarters, hospitals, and psychiatric asylums—that dominate the lives of all of these characters. Here is a literary distillation of the alienation, helplessness, and controlled fury of exile and incarceration—both physical and mental—presented in a series of moving, allegorical portraits of lives ensnared by the structures of power.
Aslı Erdoğan (Istanbul, 1967) was arrested and imprisoned by the Turkish government in a sweeping roundup of dissident voices after the failed coup attempt of July 2016. The subject of both PEN International and PEN America advocacy campaigns, she has published novels, collections of short stories and poetic prose, and selections from her political essays. As a journalist, she has covered controversial topics such as state violence, discrimination, and human rights, for which she has been persecuted in a variety of ways.
Asli Erdogan (Istanbul, 1967) is is a renowned, prize-winning author, journalist and human rights activist whose fiction has been translated into many languages. She has published novels, collections of short stories and poetic prose, and selections from her political essays. As a journalist, she has covered controversial topics such as state violence, discrimination, and human rights, for which she has been persecuted in a variety of ways.
Erdogan was imprisoned for four months by the Turkish government in a sweeping roundup of dissident voices after the failed coup attempt of July 2016. The subject of both PEN International and PEN America advocacy campaigns, she was released from prison in late December 2016.
This is her second novel to be translated into English.
Sevinç Türkkan was born in Bulgaria and grew up in Istanbul,Turkey where she attended Boğaziçi University earning a B.A. in Western Languages and Literatures. She completed a Ph.D. degree in Comparative Literature at the University of Illinois-Urbana. Currently, she teaches modern Turkish literature and intellectual history at the University of Rochester. She specializes in modern Turkish literature and culture, translation studies, and cross-cultural studies with research interests in multilingualism, Turkish-German & Turkish-American literary relations, postcolonial studies, and world literature. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Türkisch-deutsche Studien Jahrbuch, Translation and Literature, Teaching Translation (Ed. Lawrence Venuti, Routledge), Critical Essays on Orhan Pamuk (Ibidem), Global Perspectives on Orhan Pamuk (Routledge), Post-1960 Novelists in Turkey, Making Connections, International Journal of the Humanities, and elsewhere. Her translations from Turkish and German appeared in Best European Fiction (Ed. Aleksandar Hemon, Dalkey Archive Press) and in K1N: Journal of Literary Translation. She is on the publications editorial board of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies (CMES) at the University of Texas, Austin. She is the co-editor (with David Damrosch) of Approaches to Teaching the Works of Orhan Pamuk (MLA), and she is at work on a book manuscript titled Translation Criticism and the Construction of World Literature.
