AnatoliaLit is thrilled to announce that we now represent the Estate of Sevim Burak, one of the most daring writers of the 20th century. Her work is a legacy that continues to inspire writers today and to challenge the boundaries of imagination and what we deem possible, even conceivable, with the written word.

“It is true that Sevim Burak worked at her art by literally rolling on the floor with her words, rough-and-tumble; but it cannot be said that she wrote and put things together at random. Underneath her sentence-cutting, her sliding of lines one on top of another, her inversion of familiar stretches of time, lies a very important quest that is almost a life and death issue. This is a search for meaning through the use of style. Guided by what she calls ‘intuition’, Sevim Burak finds meaning, or truth, through her search among the tiny pieces of paper on the floor, discovering the answers to her questions one by one as she reassembles them.”

‘She Hid Herself Intentionally, by Nilüfer Güngörüş in One Master, One World: Sevim Burak

It is our great pleasure and honor to announce that author Leylâ Erbil has received the PEN 2013 Short Story Award.

An excerpt from the acceptance speech (a rough translation/interpretation):

I’m just thinking out loud, by writing, that is…

I’ve seen deaths: The deaths of friends, loved ones, I’ve seen the agony of the masses, lives turned into torture, the depravity of power. I’ve been forced to face a world the sight of which sickened me. A bruised, insatiable desire, humiliated ambitions, all run rampant, a growing distance—is that it?—can’t quite put my thumb on it, as if deciphering the human is a simple task!... Still, I couldn’t help myself; I wrote. That’s right, stories, poems, and novels…

I’m just thinking out loud, by writing, that is…

In 2002 Erbil was nominated as a candidate for Nobel Literature Prize by Turkey PEN for “her mastery in Turkish language and literature, her unique world that creates in her works through her creative language and the universality of this world, her contribution to arts and also her sensitive intellectual manners for ordinary people, life and world.”

Erbil’s first novel, Tuhaf Bir Kadın (A Strange Woman), a groundbreaking work of fiction originally published in 1971, is one of three recommended for translation by the Turkish National Committee for UNESCO.

About Erbil’s most recent novel, a work of prose poetry entitled Kalan (What Remains), published by İş Bankası in 2011, literary critic Oylum Yılmaz writes: ‘I might describe Kalan as a political poem about time, truth, and memory. ... The protagonist is narrator/author Lahzen. Throughout Kalan we find ourselves swept up in the stream of consciousness of Lahzen, who embodies all of the challenges and self-contradictions of what it means to be an intellectual, a revolutionary, and a woman.’

Erbil’s new novel, Tuhaf Bir Erkek (A Strange Man) will be published by İş Bankası later this year.

Foreign publications:

Karanlığın Günü: Jour d'obscurité (Actes Sud, 2012)

Tuhaf Bir Kadın: Eine seltsame Frau (Unionsverlag, 2005)

(For other German resources: http://www.unionsverlag.com/info/title.asp?title_id=2345)

A full English translation of Tuhaf Bir Kadın (A Strange Woman) is also available, as well as sample English translations of other works.

Bulgarian rights to Yavuz Ekinci's Cennetin Kayıp Toprakları (The Lost Lands of Paradise) have been sold to Altera, esteemed publisher of such authors as John Banville, Iris Murdoch, Philip Roth, E. L. Doctorow, Angela Carter, Don DeLillo, Sarah Waters, Antonio Tabucchi, Javier Maria, Hermann Broch. Pretty good company to be in, I'd say!

Here's what literary critic Burcu Aktaş has to say about this extraordinary novel:

The author’s characters are people who have been displaced, deprived of their languages and their identities. The Lost Lands of Paradise, with the Kurdish and Armenian issues at its core, is impressive because of the atmosphere that the author creates and the language he uses in doing so. ... Another impressive quality of the novel is that it gives us a new depiction of hell. Aware of this, the author begins the novel with a quote from Hallac‐ı Mansur: ‘Hell is not where we experience pain; it’s where no one hears of our pain.’ .. Yes, The Lost Lands of Paradise is a novel with a ‘burden’. And it is a novel that, using the power of literature, has succeeded in expressing that ‘burden’.

Burcu Aktaş, Radikal Kitap, September 14, 2012

AnatoliaLit is honored to be representing Leylâ Erbil, one of the most daring and influential writers of the century!