(reviewed by JD Jung)
“When they’ve had their fill of despair, of stories, crimes, sins, confessions- each one the same as any other –they leave the back alleys behind and revert to their destiny, picking up where they left off. To invent the hell of human freedom—moving beyond good and evil…far from absolute good and absolute evil, in the comforting safely of mediocrity…”
In the novella, “The Stone Building”, an unknown man, named by our narrator simply as “A” survives outside the stone building. Homeless, mentally ill, and perhaps after prior stints with the law, he represents others inside and outside the stone building.
Actually, stone buildings are the common thread in the novella and three short stories whether they represent a prison, a hospital or perhaps a mental or emotional boundary.
The short stories are as compelling as the novella. A woman, perhaps living in exile in a small building and even in a smaller cell in her mind cannot escape her past and violent memories as she is discovered by “The Morning Visitor”. A lonely pregnant woman whose partner is incarcerated, travels with an unknown future in “The Prisoner”. “Wooden Birds” tells a story of young women living in a German sanitarium, suffering from tuberculosis. Some are living in exile, but all feel trapped. We learn the story of the foreign-born women, including their emotional vulnerabilities as they venture into the Black Forest.
Though these haunting prose leave a lot to the reader for interpretation, isolation, desperation, and hopelessness are common feelings. Turkish author Asli Erdogan embarks on a sensitive study of an all-too-common human condition.
Erdogan first appeared on my radar a week ago in a notification from City Lights Publishers. As an author, journalist and human rights activist she is being prosecuted by the Turkish government and is in self-imposed exile in Europe. She was arrested in 2016 along with other journalists from the pro-Kurdish newspaper, Ozgur Gundem. Though she receives death threats while in Europe, she was finally acquitted on February 14 of this year.
For more information: #FreeTurkeyMedia
