Reckless

Description

LONGLISTED FOR THE FT/OPPENHEIMERFUNDS EMERGING VOICES AWARD 2016 'Toptas seems to me Orhan Pamuk's equal ... He strikes me as just as gifted a writer' Sydney Morning Herald Thirty years after completing his military service Ziya flees the spiralling turmoil of one of Turkey's great sprawling cities to seek a serene existence in a dream-like village. Kenan - an old friend from the army - is there to greet him. However, the village does not provide the total isolation Ziya years for and he is forced back through the tangled web of his memory in search of his lost family and the reason why Kenan feels so extravagantly indebted to him. Reckless masterfully blurs the boundaries between memory and reality to create a gripping tale that introduces a major writer to English-language readers.

Hasan Ali Toptas is one of Turkey's top writers. His short story collections include The Identity of a Laugh, The Whispers of the Nobodies and Solitudes. His novels have won the Cankaya Literature Prize, the Culture Ministry Prize, the Yunus Nadi Novel Prize, the Cevdet Kudret Literature Prize, the Orhan Kemal Novel Prize and the Turkish Writers' Union Great Novel Prize. His early masterpiece Shadowless (1995), also translated by Maureen Freely and John Angliss will be published by Bloomsbury in 2016. He now lives in Ankara. He has been translated into German, French and Finnish. Solitudes has been made into a play and Shadowless was made into a film in 1998. Maureen Freely is a novelist and journalist who contributes to the Guardian and the Independent. She translated Orhan Pamuk's recent novels from Turkish into English. She grew up in Turkey and now lives in England. John Angliss won the inaugural British Council's Young Translators' Prize for prose in 2012. He lives in Ankara.

A wonderful and gripping story. It took me to a seemingly unfamiliar part of the planet and then showed me that there was nothing unfamiliar about it - love is love everywhere, a brother is a brother, betrayal is betrayal. This is news and history made intimate. I am deeply grateful to Hasan Ali Toptas for having told me this story and look forward to others from him * Nadeem Aslam * Turkish literature has encountered an extraordinary writer. Hasan Ali Toptas is a master of language and construction and Turkish literature's strongest novelist. He is one of the few writers who will make their mark on the future of Turkish literature * Hurriyet * Our Franz [Kafka]'s new name is Hasan * Frankfurter Allgemaine * A novel to be read slowly, with frequent pauses to catch your breath. Take it in small servings, to stop it interfering with your life. And beware! This book can hurt * Yeni Safak * Hasan Ali Toptas, master of language and plot ... Toptas is without doubt one of the greatest novelists in the Turkish language ... It is forceful, beautiful, and bursting with life. Read it! I say * Aksam * A postmodern Twilight Zone: dark and bizarre * Kirkus *