Novel set mainly in Bremen, Germany and Turkey

7th April 2023

A Light Still Burns by Selim Özdoğan, novel set mainly in Bremen, Germany and Turkey, translated by Ayça Türkoğlu and Katy Derbyshire.

The author has mastered the craft of gentle and incisive storytelling and the translation is very good. Gül winds up in Germany, as many Turkish people have done in recent decades; she returns to Anatolia for several years to be with her family but then comes back to Germany once again, to be with other members of her family, including her husband.

The novel captures the sense of dislocation very well, people who arrive in an unfamiliar country are looking in on a culture from the outside, never quite feeling fully connected. This seems to be the case for Gül who is neither fully integrated into German culture nor fully at home in Turkey, where she is always seen as the daughter who went to Germany. In her absences, both countries move on, culture shifts, words change, attitudes develop and she has to  master the art of observation to help her understand – to make sense of what she sees and experiences, and also determine where she fits in.

She has to deal with her daughters and her husband, who can be unreliable, she has to manage family squabbles and aspects of life that affect so many adults, all within her own specific cultural framework. It is a thought provoking account, of getting behind the headlines to the real people who move between countries and yet find themselves never fully integrated, whether from their own actions or the way indigenous society perceives them and ultimately is (or isn’t) accepting of them.

“Her life in Germany is swathed in mist; she doesn’t understand all the words – at times  she can only make out the contours of the sentences, she’s never sure she’s got everything right.”

A Light Still Burns is the third novel in the Anatolian Blues trilogy but this can easily be read as a standalone. Having said that, there is quite a cast of characters who pass through the story and I, at times, struggled to keep hold of many of them. Perhaps if I had read all three in the series, the characters may have felt more familiar and relatable, although Gül, as the central character is beautifully fleshed out, warm, sincere and thoughtful.

Tina for the TripFiction Team

Join Team TripFiction on Social Media:

Twitter (@TripFiction), Facebook (@TripFiction.Literarywanderlust), YouTube (TripFiction #Literarywanderlust), Instagram (@TripFiction) and Pinterest (@TripFiction)

Subscribe to future blog posts