Hachette India

I Will Never See the World Again

Yasemin ?ongar

Ahmet Altan

'A deeply moving memoir... We owe Ahmet Altan a tremendous debt for the strength he has shown in sharing his story with us' Jon McGregor

Written from the confines of a prison cell in Istanbul, one of Turkey's greatest living novelists reflects upon hope, despair and the light literature can bring to even the darkest places.

The destiny I put down in my novel has become mine. I am now under arrest like the hero I created years ago. I await the decision that will determine my future, just as he awaited his. I am unaware of my destiny, which has perhaps already been decided, just as he was unaware of his. I suffer the pathetic torment of profound helplessness, just as he did.

Like a cursed oracle, I foresaw my future years ago not knowing that it was my own.

Confined in a cell four metres long, imprisoned on absurd, Kafkaesque charges, novelist Ahmet Altan was one of many writers persecuted by Recep Tayyip Erdogan's oppressive regime. In this extraordinary memoir, written from his prison cell, Altan reflects upon his sentence, on a life whittled down to a courtyard covered by bars, and on the hope and solace a writer's mind can provide, even in the darkest places.

Longlisted for the 2019 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction

'It is something special to visit Ahmet Altan in his prison, and to leave with an unexpected feeling of elation, motivated by the sheer, towering greatness of the human spirit' Philippe Sands

'Read this - it will explain why you ever read anything, why anyone ever writes' AL Kennedy

Classification : Memoir
Pub Date : MAR 7, 2019
Imprint : Granta
Page Extent : 224
Binding : PB
ISBN : 9781783785155
Price : INR 999

Yasemin ?ongar

Yasemin ?ongar is the co-founder and general director of P24, a not-for profit platform for independent journalism in Istanbul. She is also the founder of K24, a Turkish literary review, and, most recently, the Istanbul Literature House. An editor, essayist and translator, ?ongar is the author of four books in Turkish.

Ahmet Altan

Ahmet Altan, one of today’s most important Turkish writers and journalists, was arrested in September 2016 and is serving a life sentence on false charges. An advocate for Kurdish and Armenian minorities and a strong voice of dissent in his country, his arrest and conviction received widespread international criticism (51 Nobel laureates signed an open letter to Turkey’s president calling for Altan’s release). Altan is the author of ten novels—all bestsellers in Turkey—and seven books of essays. In 2009 he received the Freedom and Future of the Media Prize from the Media Foundation of Sparkasse Leipzig, and in 2011 he was awarded the International Hrant Dink Award. The international bestseller Endgame was his English-language debut, and was named one of the fifty notable works of fiction of 2017 by The Washington Post. Like a Sword Wound is the winner of the prestigious Yunus Nadi Novel Prize in Turkey.