Novel
Ölmeye Yatmak
Not translated into English
Adalet Ağaoğlu · 1973
Synopsis
Aysel, a senior lecturer in sociology, takes a room on the sixteenth floor of a hotel, draws the curtains and lies down to die; the narrative covers, according to the Humanities Institute, an hour and twenty-seven minutes of waiting. Through flashbacks, she revisits her childhood in a small town, the schoolteacher who opens the values of the Republic to her, a family reluctant about her studies, the girls' lycée in Ankara, university, marriage, her career, then her affair with a student. Cornucopia and Goodreads likewise describe this past revisited during the wait.
Context
According to the Humanities Institute, the author began the book in 1968 and finished it in 1973; it appeared with Remzi Kitabevi, in thirteen numbered and titled chapters, among which extracts from a diary and letters are slipped in. It is her first novel and the first part of a trilogy, followed by Bir Düğün Gecesi and Hayır, which recent editions bring together, at her request, under the title Dar Zamanlar, according to turkedebiyati.org. The French translation by François Skvor appeared with Turquoise in 2014.
Who it is for
A long novel translated into French, in which the present of a hotel room alternates with a whole life remembered.
Prizes and reception
According to turkedebiyati.org, the book introduces the interior monologue into Turkish literature; the critic Eronat reads in it the passage from a religious state to the Republic.
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