Engagement

by Çiler İlhan, Kenneth Dakan (translator)

A celebratory dinner and engagement ceremony is to be held at a large home in Our Village, in southeast Turkey. Halil, the cousin of the future bride, Leyla, is sent to a nearby village to buy the traditional cologne. Leyla's sister, Maral, is told to go door-to-door to remind everyone to attend. Throughout the long day, the other women of the household clean, cook and toil. Meanwhile, a dust storm descends out of nowhere and a menacing mist settles over the village streets.

This harrowing tale, which spans sixteen hours and is told through the eyes of a mysterious narrator, delves into the bad blood between two timeless villages where most of the men are heavily armed village guards, and there is money to be made in agriculture, oil, fish farms and more. Geographical complexities, tangled relations, hazy memories and unreliable witnesses make for a story in which perhaps nothing is as it seems...

Based on the true story of the May 2009 massacre of over forty people, including women, children and infants, in a village in the south-eastern province of Mardin, Turkey.

110 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2021

About the author

Çiler İlhan (born 1972) is a Turkish writer. She studied International Relations and Political Science at Bosphorus University and hotel management at the Glion Hotel School in Switzerland. She has variously worked as an hotelier, a freelance writer and an editor. Currently she works as the PR manager of the Çırağan Palace Kempinski hotel in Istanbul.

As a writer, İlhan has been active since her youth. Back in 1993, she won the Yaşar Nabi award for one of her short stories. She regularly publishes stories, essays, book reviews, travel pieces and translations in Turkish newspapers and magazines. In 2011,her collection of stories Sürgün (Exile) won the EU Prize for Literature.

Reviews

[Joseph Schreiber · Rating 4 out of 5]

What creates greater tension? Knowing that terrible events lie ahead, or being caught off guard. Unfolding over the course of one day, the mysterious omniscient narrator of Engagement alludes many times to the horrors that will beset an engagement party planned for that evening. Set in a small Kurdish village in southeast Turkey where life has long been complicated by intermarriage and blood feuds the horror really hits home in the author’s Afterword. This little novella with its folkloric charm packs a punch.
A longer review can be found here: https://roughghosts.com/2024/06/07/th...

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a short novella, written like a fable and based on a real life massacre that occurred in 2009. The language is fairly simple but it is not a book that is particularly easy to read, and not just because of the subject matter. I was often confused about whether we were learning the fate of protagonists ahead of time or being told stories from the past (both are in fact true). Also, many of the names are very similar and family connections are almost impossible to follow which I presume is meant to portray how interwoven the two villages are. As a result I found that the best thing to do was just to let the story take me. In the end the exact details felt less important than the book’s depiction of life in an isolated, timeless environment and building sense of dread (when occasionally modern day sensibilities or inventions are mentioned they feel completely incongruous). I probably would have preferred something slightly longer with more of an exploration of how things had got to where they are but this approaches things a little bit differently to the norm (from what I have read previously at least) and is as much worth reading for that alone.

[Iris Mirsalari]

mooi, indrukwekkende stijl, kroniek van een aangekondigde dood-vibes

[Charlotte VA · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kort en prachtig

[Eva · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5, aangenaam verrast, een auteur die ik onthoud.

[Lili Bammens · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5 sterren.
Kroniek van een naderend onheil.
Het verhaal is gebaseerd op waargebeurde feiten, eind vorige eeuw.
In een dorpje in het Koerdische deel van Turkije wordt alles voorbereid voor een groot verlovingsfeest.
Al de inwoners van de omgeving zijn uitgenodigd.
Maar er zijn spanningen tussen bewoners die ook nog eens familie van elkaar zijn.
Het verhaal is spannend, ook wel hard, en het geeft veel informatie over de plaatselijke gewoontes.

[Leslie · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5* - A slim, gut-punch of a book. Inspired by true events in a small village in Turkey in the early 2000s, we follow Halil and others as they prepare for a relative's engagement party. Halil is running errands around Our Village and Other Village. We know from the start that things do not end well for the people we meet. Along the way, Ilhan shares snippets of past wrongs done, people hurt, land grabbed by members of the same family and often in support of or willful ignorance of the government. How do generations of one extended family allow these hurts to simmer unresolved? We see it time and again across time and place. The narrator knows that the truth is opaque, memory is fallible, systems get entrenched, and wounds left untreated fester. The final act is grim and heartbreaking. I needed to sit quietly for 10 minutes after to let it settle in my brain. At only 95 pages, it's a sharp and impactful read that calls us to action.

[Sonja Ring · Rating 3 out of 5]

Değişik bir öykü, kısa bir kitap