11 Sep / I Will Never See the World Again: The Memoir of an Imprisoned Writer by Ahmet Altan, translated by Yasemin Çongar [in Booklist]
*STARRED REVIEW
For “speaking a few innocuous words on a television program in the aftermath of the failed 2016 “coup” against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Ahmet Altan was sentenced to life imprisonment, recounts his friend and lawyer Philippe Sands in his foreword to this book. With seven nonfiction collections and 10 novels, Altan is one of Turkey’s most important writers. He and his economist brother, Mehmet, were arrested in September 2016, deemed guilty of “giving subliminal messages” against the Erdoğan regime, and condemned to a maximum-security prison. Mehmet was miraculously released, but Altan remains in a tiny cell – at least while Erdoğan reigns.
Over November 2017 to May 2018, Altan managed to send out handwritten notes from prison to his friend and translator Yasemin Çongar, who immediately transcribed the blue-ink-on-white-sheets to a computer and translated each missive in a single sitting. She transfers that immediacy onto the page with reverence and grace, the essays alchemized into this phenomenally inspiring memoir. Despite stifling, Kafka-esque circumstances, Altan channels freedom through his imagination; he escapes through his mind. His unfailing creativity feeds his very soul to survive: “I will write in order to be able to live, to endure, to fight.”
YA/Mature Readers: Teens interested in international politics and human rights will find lasting resonance in Altan’s hopeful resilience.
Review: “Nonfiction,” Booklist, September 1, 2019
Readers: Adult
Published: 2019