„This could be the work to introduce an English-language readership to one of the most vibrant of voices – and personalities – of contemporary German-language literature“ (NBG, Spring-issue 2006)
A family saga from the heart of the Orient – A small town in Anatolia in the 1950s. This is where Leyla grows up, the youngest of five children, among family and neighbours. She cherishes one wish: to escape this world. Feridun Zaimoglu looks back at the country he and his parents came from. A country paralysed by the Cold War, a place where strict religious beliefs infiltrate everyday life, where families are under the control of fathers, where women play a modest role – and where all this is beginning to waver. Adolescent Leyla describes her everyday life: mornings at school, afternoons in the company of her sisters who do embroidery work for their dowries, and life in her small, poor hometown where everyone tries to get by as best they can. Leyla’s father is unlucky. He loses his job as a railway official and gets involved in increasingly shady business deals. Her brothers go their own way and rebel against their father, while her sisters wait for husbands to be chosen for them, hoping they will find true love. Leyla gains a degree of freedom, but loses it again when she becomes a woman. She also uncovers a dark family secret. New opportunities arise when her family moves to Istanbul: Leyla meets and falls in love with a man. But neither of them have a future in Turkey. With epic strength and a sensuous, colourful and archaic language, Feridun Zaimoglu writes about a young girl coming of age, about the break-up of her family and an unfamiliar world, which many left behind to become guest workers in Germany.
