Aline Jabbari

JORDAN ELGRABLY • Publisher/Editor-at-Large Although Ahmet Altan doesn’t often make it to international top 10 lists as a Turkish writer, I found myself mesmerized by one of three books he wrote in prison, the novel Madame Hayat, or as it’s known in English and Italian, Lady Life (Other Press, 2023, translated by Yasemin Çongar). I found this unpredictable love triangle hard to put down.

A former friend once told me that the most valuable part of getting to know me was learning about the Kurds. I was reduced to a history lesson, a mere corrective to a status quo that invisibilizes Kurdish realities in the everyday Middle Eastern imagination. I would have preferred not to do that work, I said. The work of constantly pushing for Kurdish realities to appear on someone else’s horizon.