- Published: 07/03/2019
- ISBN: 9781783785162
- Granta Books
- 224 pages
I Will Never See the World Again
Ahmet Altan
Translated by Yasemin Çongar
Longlisted for the 2019 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction
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 is 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.
£9.99
[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
A remarkable memoir by a remarkable writer ... 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, author of, East West Street
Ahmet Atlan's memoir is a message in a bottle, a pearl in a bottle, smuggled out to us from Erdogan's sea of darkness. I Will Never See The World Again is a startling, heartbreaking testament to the author's honesty and resilience, a love letter to his calling, an eye-witness statement from the hell of denunciations and mass arrests that Turkey has become. It stands with those very rare books - by Frankl, Niemoller, Grossman, Levi, Solzhenitsyn - which bring truths from a furnace where lives are burned. Read this - it will explain why you ever read anything, why anyone ever writes
AL Kennedy, author, Serious Sweet
Ahmet Altan on Granta.com
Essays & Memoir | Granta Books
Cheating
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‘I get into the police car with four officers from the Anti-Terrorism Branch. They are taking me to the prison.’
Essays & Memoir | Granta 145
I Will Never See the World Again
Ahmet Altan
‘I was in a cage because a man had eaten an apple.’ Translated from the Turkish by Yasemin Çongar.