Ayça Türkoğlu and Katy Derbyshire read from Selim Özdoğan's A LIGHT STILL BURNS (V&Q Books, 2023)

Part three of the Anatolian Blues trilogy

‘There are three ways to face life: put up with it, fight or flee.’ After eight years in Turkey, Gül leaves her native Anatolia and returns to Germany. Reunited with her husband Fuat, she observes life there from the margins. As age gives her ever deeper insight, she sees society change rapidly, and yet her ability to connect to the people around her remains constant.

Gül’s life is shaped by the melancholy of separation, but with her warm-hearted and accepting outlook she has learned to endure homesickness and longing. Full of emotions and poetry but told without sentimentality, Selim Özdoğan’s account of Gül’s journey is a tender and moving novel about home, cultural identity and a life between two worlds.

‘Selim Özdoğan’s latest novel is an affectionate testament to a whole generation of women who are often overlooked. Gül has many names and many faces.’ Steffen Radlmaier, Nürnberger Nachrichten

‘A luminous conclusion to a trilogy that has no equal in any language. Through the story of one woman who insists, against the odds, on meeting the world with an open heart, it brings grace and dignity to the many unsung millions whose lives have followed the same zigzagging paths between Turkey and Germany over three generations.’ Maureen Freely, author of Sailing Through Byzantium and translator of Orhan Pamuk

‘Anchored in the circumstances of this century and yet timeless, this is the story of exiles and homecomings, of silences and distances and loneliness but with a hopefulness at its heart. Above all it is a story about women and age: an old woman’s careful, thoughtful, analytic eye reflecting on motherhood, friendship, marriage, survival. It is about pepper paste and aubergines and goat meat and cooking and feeding people and finding the right ingredients in a foreign place. It is about all the small daily worries of a woman which can be read as all the great difficulties of finding ourselves a place in the world that feels like home. This book is full of wisdom.’ Jane Campbell, author of Cat Brushing

Author bio
Selim Özdoğan was born in Germany in 1971 and has been publishing books since 1995. Apart from writing he likes being on stage, practicing yoga and drinking coffee, and is constantly trying to find ways to express the life within him.

Translator bios
Ayça Türkoğlu is a literary translator from German and Turkish. Her work has been shortlisted for the Helen & Kurt Wolff Translator’s Prize. She lives in North London.

Katy Derbyshire translates contemporary German writers including Olga Grjasnowa, Clemens Meyer and Heike Geissler. She teaches literary translation and also heads the V&Q Books imprint.

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