The Memoir of an Imprisoned Writer
Starred review from August 19, 2019
A Turkish political prisoner opposes his imagination to the grim reality of oppression in this sometimes harrowing, sometimes luminous memoir. After the failed 2016 coup attempt by members of the Turkish military, novelist Altan (Endgame) was arrested along with his brother Mehmet by President Recep Erdogan’s government and prosecuted for sending “subliminal messages” to coup plotters on a TV show, being a “religious putschist,” and being a “Marxist terrorist,” and was sentenced to life in prison. (His real offense was criticizing the government.) In these essays, Altan vividly evokes the Kafkaesque farce of court proceedings; prison squalor and claustrophobia; the dehumanizing routines of handcuffs, lineups, and confiscations that “carved us out of life like a rotten, maggot-laced chunk from a pear;” a future of heartbreaking constraint in which “I will never see a sky unframed by the walls of a courtyard.” But he’s also buoyed by small kindnesses, the hope of seeing loved ones, a cellmate who refuses police demands to denounce others, and writerly reveries that let him “pass through your walls with ease.” Intertwining gritty detail with lyrical effusion, Altan’s narrative is a searing indictment of Turkey’s authoritarian regime and an inspiring testament to human resilience.
September 1, 2019
Stark, compact essays about a writer's imprisonment in an increasingly authoritarian Turkey. In early 2018, Altan (Like a Sword Wound, 2018, etc.), an acclaimed novelist and essayist, was sentenced to life in prison for treason based on televised comments regarding a failed 2016 coup against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. As Philippe Sands recalls in his foreword, "[Altan] spoke with passion and courage, intelligence and humor on the writer's place in a decent society." This recollection aptly reflects this slim compendium of essays, produced by Altan while imprisoned. He sketches the arc of his descent into a demeaning carceral nightmare, beginning with charges of broadcasting "subliminal messages" in support of the coup. Later, this was changed to "putschism," for which he was convicted; one judge cynically told him, "our prosecutors like using words the meanings of which they don't know." Altan was jailed alongside many intellectuals and military officers, and the first essays reflect their initial responses to incarceration. "In a matter of hours," he writes, "I had travelled across five centuries to arrive at the dungeons of the Inquisition." The author acknowledges the harrowing nature of his ordeal, and he positions himself in the tradition of imprisoned writers who respond to their plight by acknowledging its surreal qualities. "I had seen the monstrous face of reality," he writes. "From now on I would live like a man clinging to a single branch." While horrified by his eventual life sentence, he became determined to use the writer's tools and identity to fight both inner despair and his government's persecution: "I must confess that even from within a dark cell, the idea of fighting filled me with such exuberance that I was saying 'To the end, ' with excitement." This spirit infuses the book and lends rhythmic urgency to Altan's voice as he reflects on the intensity of life in a cell, the plights of fellow prisoners, and how to recall loved ones without succumbing to despair. An inspiring account of the writing life and a chilling glimpse of authoritarianism's slippery slope.
COPYRIGHT(2019) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Starred review from September 1, 2019
For speaking a few innocuous words on a television program in the aftermath of the failed 2016 "coup against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Altan was sentenced to life imprisonment, recounts his friend and lawyer Philippe Sands in his foreword to this book. With seven nonfiction collections and 10 novels, Altan is one of Turkey's most important writers. He and his economist brother, Mehmet, were arrested in September 2016, deemed guilty of giving subliminal messages against the Erdogan regime, and condemned to a maximum-security prison. Mehmet was miraculously released, but Altan remains in a tiny cell?at least while Erdogan reigns. Over November 2017 to May 2018, Altan managed to send out handwritten notes from prison to his friend and translator Yasemin �ongar, who immediately transcribed the blue-ink-on-white-sheets to a computer and translated each missive in a single sitting. She transfers that immediacy onto the page with reverence and grace, the essays alchemized into this phenomenally inspiring memoir. Despite stifling, Kafka-esque circumstances, Altan channels freedom through his imagination; he escapes through his mind. His unfailing creativity feeds his very soul to survive: I will write in order to be able to live, to endure, to fight. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)