Cheating | Ahmet Altan | Granta

Excerpt

Cheating

Ahmet Altan

Translated by Yasemin Çongar

£9.99

Our author, novelist Ahmet Altan was first arrested on 12 September 2016, accused of disseminating ‘subliminal messages evocative of coup’ via a television talk-show. Some twelve days later he was imprisoned (pending trial) on charges of ‘attempting to overthrow the government of Turkey’ and ‘membership in a terrorist organization’.

In November 2019 he was released for 8 days, before being re-arrested. An appeal, and a hearing at the European Court of Human rights, are pending.

What follows is an excerpt from his memoir,
I Will Never See the World Again.

Ahmet Altan

Born in 1950, Ahmet Altan, one of today's most important Turkish writers, was arrested in September 2016 for his work as a journalist. An advocate for Kurdish and Armenian minorities and a central figure in the Turkish cultural world, he is the author of five successful novels. He has been awarded the Grand Prix from the Akademi Publishing House, the prestigious Freedom and Future of the Media Prize from the Media Foundation of Sparkasse Leipzig and the International Hrant Dink Award. In February 2018 he was sentenced to life imprisonment by the Turkish state.

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Translated by Yasemin Çongar

Yasemin Çongar is co-founder and general director of P24, a non-profit platform for independent journalism in Istanbul. She is also the co-founder of Turkey’s online book review K24 and the Istanbul Literature House. An editor, essayist and translator, Çongar is the author of four books in Turkish.

More about the translator →

[This book] speaks for itself with such clarity, certainty and wisdom that only one thing needs to be said: read it. And then read it again... A radiant celebration of the inner resources of human beings... Sublime... A triumph of the spirit

Simon Callow, Guardian

£9.99