Every Fire You Tend

BY Sema Kaygusuz / TRanslated from turkish BY Nicholas glastonbury

Winner, 2019 TA First Translation Prize

Winner, English PEN Translates Award

You traced the shape of shame with your body, concealing that feeling as it pulled you into its centre. You were seeking a language for yourself, a language inherited from no one and akin to no one else’s, a language of figs…

In 1938, in the remote Dersim region of Eastern Anatolia, the Turkish Republic launched an operation to erase an entire community of Zaza-speaking Alevi Kurds. Inspired by those brutal events, and the survival of Kaygusuz’s own grandmother, this densely lyrical and allusive novel grapples with the various inheritances of genocide, gendered violence and historical memory as they reverberate across time and place from within the unnamed protagonist’s home in contemporary Istanbul.

Kaygusuz imagines a narrative anchored by the weight of anguish and silence, fuelled by mysticism, wisdom and beauty. This is a powerful exploration of a still-taboo subject, deeply significant to the fault lines of modern-day Turkey.

Contributors’ details

Sema Kaygusuz (born 1972) is one of Turkey’s leading female writers. She has published five collections of short stories, three novels, a collection of nonfiction essays, and a play, which have won a number of awards in Turkey and Europe and have been translated into English, French, German, Norwegian, and Swedish. Her short story collection The Well of Trapped Words was published in an English translation by Maureen Freely (Comma Press, 2015).

Nicholas Glastonbury is a translator of Turkish literature. He is also a doctoral candidate in cultural anthropology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and a co-editor of the e-zine Jadaliyya.

PRAISE

‘I feel genuinely honoured to have read it. It is everything I look for in a translated novel. A testament, a message, a gesture towards the forgotten, a memorial, a living breathing set of linguistic and political decisions, unswervingly taken on and engaged with by the translator and the publisher. The humanity in this book, in what it sets out to do, and the care with which that intent is rendered in English, is startling. A mighty work of literature, which English readers should be profoundly thankful to encounter.’ – Max Porter on behalf of the judges, TA First Translation Prize

‘This is a book that has a lot to teach; and it goes about it with astonishing poetic and lyrical wordplay (Nicholas Glastonbury is an infinitely gifted and dedicated translator). Arriving late in 2019, this book should not be overlooked as one of the finest novels in translation of the whole year.’ – Will Heath, Books & Bao

‘This book is very intense and rarely lets up its intensity. Kaygusuz has a story to tell and she is going to tell it her way, feminist, mythical, critical of Turkish homogenisation, with a language that is appropriate to its subject matter. It is a very powerful book, not one you will forget easily and, indeed, one that will give you a lot to think about.’ – The Modern Novel

‘Kaygusuz extends her greetings to all the hurt of the past, painting a portrait of human suffering in all its clarity and poetic beauty. Every Fire You Tend is a history of pain, of cruelty, of hope, of being unable to give up on a world so beautiful you want to cry out; it is a history of all the feelings that have evolved alongside humans.’ – Halil Türkden, Agos Kitap 

‘In a country still ruled by denial and by faith in a homogenous culture, Sema Kaygusuz’s superb novel brings memories of a diverse and mixed Turkey rushing back. It takes pleasure in claiming as part of Turkish cultural heritage all the ancient civilizations that have marched through Anatolia and elsewhere – Hittite or Assyrian, Greek or Phoenician. The result is profoundly beautiful, a way of applying the Alevi theory of the migration of souls in the service of cultural history.’ – Charif Majdalani, L’Orient Littéraire 

‘When you finish reading this book, you are overcome with the feeling that you hold in your hands an atlas of all the sufferings of humanity.’ – Esra Küçük, Arka Kapak 

‘Sema Kaygusuz’s novel is a literary Guernica, far-reaching in its scope, its bitterness touched with honey. Its staggering cultural profundity, its unique style, and its impressive experimental touch leave a distinct taste on the reader’s palate.’ – Pakize Barışta, Taraf 

‘How to speak about this book without making its poetry disappear? This incantatory story is served by its calm decor, planted between quietude and desolation, between certainty and mystery, light and darkness, cruelty and sensuality, indecency and modesty, dream and reality. Despite its aesthetic pleasures, Every Fire You Tend never lets us forget the lamentations of mourning.’ – Anne-Marie Mitchell, La Marseillaise

‘Each of Sema Kaygusuz’s books is a hymn to life and the sensuality of the world, over which hangs the shadow of death and the tragedies that have punctuated Turkish history.’ – Marc Semo, Libération

‘As stylistically thrilling as it is exceptionally calm, Every Fire You Tend represents an assault upon our usual habits of reading. The author approaches legends handed down over the centuries in a new light, daring to put forward interpretations that shock expectations. Undermining countless concepts like heroism, self-sacrifice, and compassion that are usually held in high esteem, Kaygusuz raises a moral perspective deeply rooted in the culture and geography of Anatolia and Mesopotamia.’ – Sevengül Sönmez, Sprache im technischen Zeitalter

MORE INFORMATION

• ISBNs: 9781911284291 (print) / 9781911284284 (ebook)

• Publication date: 14 November 2019

• Extent: 272 pp

• Format: B-format paperback (198mm × 127mm)

• Rights held: World English