A jailed Kurdish leader and a Turkish writer on the other side of the bars have used their penpal exchanges to write one of Turkey’s highest-selling books.
The crime novel Duet in Purgatory, which features a retired left-wing lawyer and a bitter aging general with a tortuous past, has been a roaring success.
The two writers developed the story, which spans the past 40 years of Turkey’s tumultuous history and the long-standing Kurdish conflict, without ever discussing the plot.
Photo: AFP
“It was a risky gamble to try and write a novel like you’d play chess, move by move, without agreeing on the plot, the characters or the style — nothing,” Selahattin Demirtas told a literary critic in an interview from prison.
The writing of the story began when author and translator Yigit Bener sent the jailed Kurdish leader Demirtas, who is serving a 42-year sentence, a copy of Louis-Ferdinand Celine’s classic novel Journey to the End of the Night.
He also put a note inside — “the expression of my solidarity.”
Demirtas, who is 51 and a former co-president of the third-largest political party in Turkey’s parliament, was jailed in 2016, with the European Court of Human Rights later condemning his detention as political and calling for his release.
“I couldn’t accept that this man for whom, like 6 million others, I had voted for, and whose ideas I share, found himself behind bars while I am free,” Bener said.
Bener, who lived in exile in the 1980s, had praised Demirtas’s collection of short stories Dawn, and the two began corresponding via the politician’s lawyer.
The re-election of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in May last year killed Demirtas’ hope of an early release, so Bener pitched the idea of taking their correspondence further.
“What if we wrote a novel, both of us?” Bener suggested, although he had not thought about a plot or characters and had not intended it as a serious project.
While the idea originally sought to keep the prisoner busy, the duo soon wrapped up 13 chapters. Bener refused to say who wrote first, but said that the pair took turns to write.
“We had a lot of fun, but we had to finish,” Bener said. “We put it aside for two months before we had a few friends read it.”
Demirtas’ publishing house, Dipnot, which has put out his previous novels and short stories, initially printed 55,000 copies last month, with more to come next month.
“Our personal stories, mine and Yigit’s trajectories, contributed to shaping the novel. He motivated me when I needed it,” the Kurdish political leader said.
The secret behind the novel’s success is its timely relevance, Bener said.
“The book poses the question of reconciliation through two characters from the same generation of losers who share the same feeling of defeat,” Bener said. “The idea speaks to today’s Turkey which is more polarized than ever.”
Bener was “extremely emotional” when he finally got permission to meet Demirtas in Edirne prison in northwest Turkey on the day of the book’s release, as the opposition leader is in isolation and only allowed weekly visits from his lawyer or family.
Exceptionally, he was let out of the small cell where he has been locked up for eight years, which he shares with a former mayor of the Kurdish city of Diyarbakir, Adnan Selcuk Mizrakli.
Critics have praised the “funny, fast-paced and spirited narrative,” with readers rushing to see the free half of the writing duo as he tours bookshops.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
CONFIDENT ON DEAL: ‘Ukraine wants a seat at the table, but wouldn’t the people of Ukraine have a say? It’s been a long time since an election, the US president said US President Donald Trump on Tuesday criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and added that he was more confident of a deal to end the war after US-Russia talks. Trump increased pressure on Zelenskiy to hold elections and chided him for complaining about being frozen out of talks in Saudi Arabia. The US president also suggested that he could meet Russian President Vladimir Putin before the end of the month as Washington overhauls its stance toward Russia. “I’m very disappointed, I hear that they’re upset about not having a seat,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida when asked about the Ukrainian
RSS