Exile

Exile, the new book of short stories by Çiler İlhan, one of our contemporary writers, has been written “with the hope that all those exiled from their homes, countries, bodies, souls…” -from the occupation of Iraq to the women in Batman, from laboratory dogs to Pippa, from Hrant Dink to the residents of Sulukule, which all remain in the cold of the newspapers, – “may return to their homes within,” and is dedicated to every living creature’s “making itself be.”

With its original literary style that views the subtly bleeding wounds of society with a fascinating profundity and its stories that are linked to one another, Exile is a short story book that has the taste of a novel…

Waking up from sleep without a reason, if you feel a slight breeze over your head, that is me… As you open your eyes, shaken as if you were falling off a cliff, I am right at your ear… If, in your dream, there is a knock on the door and you wake up, and if there is a knock on the door at your house and there is no one at the door, that is me… If you are having terrible nightmares, if an incubus is plaguing you, if you are opening your eyes in the middle of the night unable to breathe, I am there on top of you.