Maureen Freely joins us to present her translation of Turkish writer Sevgi Soysal's novel "Dawn," in conversation with author, scholar, and critic Merve Emre. This virtual event, brought to you in partnership with our friends at @thirdplacebooksevents1303, @BrooklineBooksmith, and @archipelagobooks, took place on Zoom.
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About the book:
A searing autobiographical novel about a single night in prison suggests how broken spirits can be mended, and dreams rebuilt through imagination and human kindness.
In "Dawn," translated into English for the first time, legendary Turkish feminist Sevgi Soysal brings together dark humor, witty observations, and trenchant criticism of social injustice, militarism, and gender inequality.
As night falls in Adana, köftes and cups of cloudy raki are passed to the dinner guests in the home of Ali - a former laborer who gives tight bear hugs, speaks with a southeastern lilt, and radiates the spirit of a child. Among the guests are a journalist named Oya, who has recently been released from prison and is living in exile on charges of leftist sympathizing, and her new acquaintance, Mustafa. A swift kick knocks down the front door and bumbling policemen converge on the guests, carting them off to holding cells, where they’ll be interrogated and tortured throughout the night.
Fear spools into the anxious, claustrophobic thoughts of a return to prison, just after tasting freedom. Bristling snatches of Oya’s time in prison rush back - the wild curses and wilder laughter of inmates, their vicious quarrels and rapturous belly-dancing, or the quiet boon of a cup of tea. Her former inmates created fury and joy out of nothing. Their brimming resilience wills Oya to fight through the night and is fused with every word of this blazing, lucid novel.
About our guests:
Maureen Freely is a writer, translator, senior lecturer at Warwick University, and the President of English PEN. Her seventh novel, "Sailing through Byzantium," was chosen as one of the best novels of 2014 by The Sunday Times. She has translated or co-translated a number of Turkish memoirs and classics, including "The Time Regulation Institute" by Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar and five works by the Turkish novelist and Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk. She also co-translated "A Useless Man" by Sait Faik Abasıyanık with Alex Dawes. She is widely regarded as the foremost translator of Turkish literature. Sevgi Soysal was the first writer she ever translated.
Merve Emre is associate professor of English at the University of Oxford. She is the author of "Paraliterary: The Making of Bad Readers in Postwar America," "The Ferrante Letters," and "The Personality Brokers." She is finishing a book titled "Post-Discipline: Literature, Professionalism, and the Crisis of the Humanities" and writing a book called "Love and Other Useless Pursuits." She is a contributing writer at the New Yorker. Her essays and criticism have appeared in the New York Review of Books, Harper's, New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, and the London Review of Books. From 2022-23, she is a Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at the Shapiro Center at Wesleyan University.
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