What do you think?
Rate this book
Nation of Strangers: Rebuilding Home in the 21st Century
SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION
‘Her most ambitious and dazzling book yet’ Brian Eno
‘Perhaps the most urgent and necessary book of our times’ Michael Morpurgo
'Ece Temelkuran is a brilliant thinker' Omar El Akkad
Dear stranger. Are you home? Do you feel at home? For how much longer?
Across the world the number of refugees and exiles, the dispossessed and displaced, the politically homeless and the economically excluded is growing. In the decade since she left her own home, Ece Temelkuran has been a political Cassandra, warning those convinced it couldn’t happen in their country that fascism is coming.
Now, as oppression spreads and temperatures rise – as we face competing crises and learn, again and again, that no institution is so concrete it can’t turn to dust, and no home is too strong to be destroyed – she has written Nation of Strangers: a series of letters from one stranger to another.
Politically attuned and deeply personal, this extraordinary, heartening correspondence is a gift to treasure in uncertain times. As poetic as it is precise, it is a book for anyone who feels alienated by an ever-more monstrous world. It shows how, as we all become strangers, our home will depend on the strength we find with one another.
‘Her most ambitious and dazzling book yet’ Brian Eno
‘Perhaps the most urgent and necessary book of our times’ Michael Morpurgo
'Ece Temelkuran is a brilliant thinker' Omar El Akkad
Dear stranger. Are you home? Do you feel at home? For how much longer?
Across the world the number of refugees and exiles, the dispossessed and displaced, the politically homeless and the economically excluded is growing. In the decade since she left her own home, Ece Temelkuran has been a political Cassandra, warning those convinced it couldn’t happen in their country that fascism is coming.
Now, as oppression spreads and temperatures rise – as we face competing crises and learn, again and again, that no institution is so concrete it can’t turn to dust, and no home is too strong to be destroyed – she has written Nation of Strangers: a series of letters from one stranger to another.
Politically attuned and deeply personal, this extraordinary, heartening correspondence is a gift to treasure in uncertain times. As poetic as it is precise, it is a book for anyone who feels alienated by an ever-more monstrous world. It shows how, as we all become strangers, our home will depend on the strength we find with one another.
232 pages, Kindle Edition
First published February 12, 2026
About the author
Ece Temelkuran
27 books612 followersEce Temelkuran, Turkish author, was born in 1973. She is a daily columnist of one of the most popular Turkish newspapers for ten years and a prize winning journalist. Her primary concerns that she addresses are the contemporary criticism of popular culture, masques of politics, women issues, and all other deteriorating identities of humanity. She uses various forms of dramatic sentimentalism and black humor together, combined with her postmodern style, creating space for tactful connections to everyday life. She is the author of three experimental literary fiction books written in the form of poem in prose, and a documentary book on hunger strikes. Lately she published two collections of articles from her column. Temelkuran is the pioneering signature of her generation with opposing voice as a young intellectual, and always brave to tell about “never to talk subjects” of Turkey.
She graduated from Faculty of Law, Ankara University in 1995. She started her journalism studies at Cumhuriyet newspaper in 1993. She worked on women’s movement, Southeast Issue in Turkey and also political detainees. Her first book, “All Women Are Confused “ was published in 1993.She was chosen as the “Journalist of the year” by German government and then she made a research on Women movement in Germany in 1993, the same year when she was chosen as the Journalist of the year.
Her research book “My Son, My Daughter, My State-The Mothers Of Detainees- From Homes To Streets.” Was published in 1997. She was awarded by Office of Doctors since she had a research paper “Virginity Test is A Crime” for Cumhuriyet journal.
Her poem- prose books “From the Edge” and “Voice Of The Inside” were published by Everest. She went to Brazil in 2003 and to India in 2004 to observe World Social Forum. She examined the nation movement after the economic Crisis in Argentina. Her books that include newspaper articles Voice Of The Inside and From Outside were published by Everest in 2005. She took the Idea and Democracy Award by the Office of Doctors in Turkey with her book “We Are Having Revolution Here, Senorita!” (Everest, 2006). She was also awarded by Diyarbakır Democratic Platform with her book “What Should I Tell You?”. Ece Temelkuran, who deserved the award of Freedom for Idea by Ayşenur Zorakolu, keeps writing on her column “From The Edge” at Haberturk newspaper and her latest books “The Deep Mountain” (2008) and “Sounds of Bananas” (2010) are published by Everest.
She graduated from Faculty of Law, Ankara University in 1995. She started her journalism studies at Cumhuriyet newspaper in 1993. She worked on women’s movement, Southeast Issue in Turkey and also political detainees. Her first book, “All Women Are Confused “ was published in 1993.She was chosen as the “Journalist of the year” by German government and then she made a research on Women movement in Germany in 1993, the same year when she was chosen as the Journalist of the year.
Her research book “My Son, My Daughter, My State-The Mothers Of Detainees- From Homes To Streets.” Was published in 1997. She was awarded by Office of Doctors since she had a research paper “Virginity Test is A Crime” for Cumhuriyet journal.
Her poem- prose books “From the Edge” and “Voice Of The Inside” were published by Everest. She went to Brazil in 2003 and to India in 2004 to observe World Social Forum. She examined the nation movement after the economic Crisis in Argentina. Her books that include newspaper articles Voice Of The Inside and From Outside were published by Everest in 2005. She took the Idea and Democracy Award by the Office of Doctors in Turkey with her book “We Are Having Revolution Here, Senorita!” (Everest, 2006). She was also awarded by Diyarbakır Democratic Platform with her book “What Should I Tell You?”. Ece Temelkuran, who deserved the award of Freedom for Idea by Ayşenur Zorakolu, keeps writing on her column “From The Edge” at Haberturk newspaper and her latest books “The Deep Mountain” (2008) and “Sounds of Bananas” (2010) are published by Everest.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 69 reviews
Want to Read
February 22, 2026I learned about this book from an article in The Nerve. The following quote from Ece Temelkuran excited me, "She argues that far right political mechanisms work to cut ties between people and communities - and hollow out our faith in humanity. She says the answer is to nurture friendship and connection, and to think of home as other people."
February 25, 2026
Nation of Strangers felt so uncannily relatable that reading it was like finding a long-lost cherished object. The book constructs a shared home for the unhomed - a growing group of people who now constitute, the author argues, a silent majority. There is something liberating in seeing their shared experiences and potential shared imaginaries articulated and placed into the world with such precision and care.
Temelkuran writes about language as both power and responsibility. She knows she is creating something that will live in the world and do things to how readers relate to it. In this book she releases, I think, two beasts.
One creates a conceptual home for the unhomed. It is beautiful, poetic, gentle, almost luminous. It draws on amor mundi, on the stubborn insistence on loving the world (and other people) even as it fractures. It dignifies the stranger. It honours shame without surrendering to it. It frames voice as collective survival not individual vanity.
The other beast is darker. It warns relentlessly, alarmingly, of fascism’s spread, of democratic fragility, of a future in which homelessness (political, moral, literal) becomes the norm. Whether its warnings are empirically warranted, it’s hard to be certain. But its plight is undoubtedly urgent, and a powerful call for solidarity.
Temelkuran has a joyous ability to craft brilliant new perspectives. When she writes, “English seemed to me like a linguistic river where all the unhomed of the world… gathered to drink,” she inverses the defeatist view of English as an oppressive language, replacing it with this beautiful and dignified image of a language that has become a gathering point for collective replenishment.
Her reflections on Enheduanna and Rutilius (the dilemma between self-pity and stoic silence) is one of the most arresting sections of the book. How does the unhomed speak without becoming theatrical? How does one preserve dignity without disappearing into silence? “This is a question of dignity,” she repeats. And it is.
Her line, “It is not the loss of home but the loss of faith in building a new one,” is probably the emotional pinnacle of the book. Exile is survivable, but loss of futurity is crushing.
By the end, the book leaves us with a paradox: we strangers have survived our own apocalypse. We know how to begin anew (something very Arendtian about this). But will we be able to make the world our home once more?
Tender and unsettling at the same time, this is the kind of book that will stay with anyone who has felt unhomed. Whether one finds its warnings necessary or overwhelming may depend on how much fragility one is already carrying. But it is, without doubt, a courageous act of language and a generous opening towards much needed intimate conversations.
Temelkuran writes about language as both power and responsibility. She knows she is creating something that will live in the world and do things to how readers relate to it. In this book she releases, I think, two beasts.
One creates a conceptual home for the unhomed. It is beautiful, poetic, gentle, almost luminous. It draws on amor mundi, on the stubborn insistence on loving the world (and other people) even as it fractures. It dignifies the stranger. It honours shame without surrendering to it. It frames voice as collective survival not individual vanity.
The other beast is darker. It warns relentlessly, alarmingly, of fascism’s spread, of democratic fragility, of a future in which homelessness (political, moral, literal) becomes the norm. Whether its warnings are empirically warranted, it’s hard to be certain. But its plight is undoubtedly urgent, and a powerful call for solidarity.
Temelkuran has a joyous ability to craft brilliant new perspectives. When she writes, “English seemed to me like a linguistic river where all the unhomed of the world… gathered to drink,” she inverses the defeatist view of English as an oppressive language, replacing it with this beautiful and dignified image of a language that has become a gathering point for collective replenishment.
Her reflections on Enheduanna and Rutilius (the dilemma between self-pity and stoic silence) is one of the most arresting sections of the book. How does the unhomed speak without becoming theatrical? How does one preserve dignity without disappearing into silence? “This is a question of dignity,” she repeats. And it is.
Her line, “It is not the loss of home but the loss of faith in building a new one,” is probably the emotional pinnacle of the book. Exile is survivable, but loss of futurity is crushing.
By the end, the book leaves us with a paradox: we strangers have survived our own apocalypse. We know how to begin anew (something very Arendtian about this). But will we be able to make the world our home once more?
Tender and unsettling at the same time, this is the kind of book that will stay with anyone who has felt unhomed. Whether one finds its warnings necessary or overwhelming may depend on how much fragility one is already carrying. But it is, without doubt, a courageous act of language and a generous opening towards much needed intimate conversations.
March 30, 2026
2026 Women's Prize for Non- fiction shortlist 2/6
A Turkish journalist, exiled because of her criticism of the regime in her homeland, writes of the confluence of facism and ecological disaster through the eyes of the stranger, the displaced, the homeless: who are you? why did you leave? how will you survive here? when will you go home?
Necessary reading for anyone who is succumbing to acceptance of the political landscape we now find ourselves in.
A Turkish journalist, exiled because of her criticism of the regime in her homeland, writes of the confluence of facism and ecological disaster through the eyes of the stranger, the displaced, the homeless: who are you? why did you leave? how will you survive here? when will you go home?
Necessary reading for anyone who is succumbing to acceptance of the political landscape we now find ourselves in.
February 3, 2026
„Ich musste mein Land verlassen, um dem Faschismus zu entkommen, um schreiben, denken, einfach 𝘴𝘦𝘪𝘯 zu können.“
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Ece Temelkuran muss aus Sicherheitsgründen die Türkei, ihr Heimatland, hinter sich lassen, um einer Verhaftung zu entgehen. Von nun an ist sie eine „Heimatlose“, eine Weltbürgerin, ein Teil der «Nation von Fremden», von Menschen, die im Exil leben, die geflüchtet sind.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
In ihrem sehr persönlichen Buch gibt sie Einblicke in ihren Kampf gegen das Alleinsein, das Heimweh und das Gefühl der Orientierungslosigkeit außerhalb ihres Heimatlandes. Wird es jemals wieder einen Ort für sie geben, an dem sie sich zu Hause fühlt? Wie soll das gehen, wenn man nur von einer Aufenthaltserlaubnis zur nächsten leben kann? Ihr Frust und auch ihr Stolz scheint an mehreren Stellen durch.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Für mich war es keine einfache Lektüre. Das Buch richtet sich aber in erster Linie auch an andere „Fremde“, die die Autorin in ihren Briefen persönlich adressiert. Ece Temelkuran erzählt sehr schonungslos von den Folgen des Faschismus, will für dieses Thema sensibilisieren und fühlt sich, so wie die meisten von uns auch, oft machtlos in Anbetracht der politischen Krisen der Gegenwart (Beispiel: Tr*mp).
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Ich hatte mir das Buch etwas anders vorgestellt und deswegen ist es wahrscheinlich ein wenig hinter meinen Erwartungen zurückgeblieben. Ich hatte angenommen, dass es noch mehr um die Erfahrungen anderer „Fremder“ geht, wie eine Art Feldstudie.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
„Nation of Strangers“ ist ein sehr wichtiges Buch und ich würde jedem die Lektüre empfehlen, der sich für das Leid Geflüchteter und „entwurzelter“ Menschen interessiert.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
4/5 ⭐️
Toll übersetzt von Michaela Grabinger
Rezensionsexemplar I Vielen Dank @netgalleyde @rowohltverlag 💚
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Ece Temelkuran muss aus Sicherheitsgründen die Türkei, ihr Heimatland, hinter sich lassen, um einer Verhaftung zu entgehen. Von nun an ist sie eine „Heimatlose“, eine Weltbürgerin, ein Teil der «Nation von Fremden», von Menschen, die im Exil leben, die geflüchtet sind.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
In ihrem sehr persönlichen Buch gibt sie Einblicke in ihren Kampf gegen das Alleinsein, das Heimweh und das Gefühl der Orientierungslosigkeit außerhalb ihres Heimatlandes. Wird es jemals wieder einen Ort für sie geben, an dem sie sich zu Hause fühlt? Wie soll das gehen, wenn man nur von einer Aufenthaltserlaubnis zur nächsten leben kann? Ihr Frust und auch ihr Stolz scheint an mehreren Stellen durch.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Für mich war es keine einfache Lektüre. Das Buch richtet sich aber in erster Linie auch an andere „Fremde“, die die Autorin in ihren Briefen persönlich adressiert. Ece Temelkuran erzählt sehr schonungslos von den Folgen des Faschismus, will für dieses Thema sensibilisieren und fühlt sich, so wie die meisten von uns auch, oft machtlos in Anbetracht der politischen Krisen der Gegenwart (Beispiel: Tr*mp).
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Ich hatte mir das Buch etwas anders vorgestellt und deswegen ist es wahrscheinlich ein wenig hinter meinen Erwartungen zurückgeblieben. Ich hatte angenommen, dass es noch mehr um die Erfahrungen anderer „Fremder“ geht, wie eine Art Feldstudie.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
„Nation of Strangers“ ist ein sehr wichtiges Buch und ich würde jedem die Lektüre empfehlen, der sich für das Leid Geflüchteter und „entwurzelter“ Menschen interessiert.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
4/5 ⭐️
Toll übersetzt von Michaela Grabinger
Rezensionsexemplar I Vielen Dank @netgalleyde @rowohltverlag 💚
July 2, 2026
4.5 ⭐️
Nation of Strangers je knjiga, ki je mogoče sploh ne bi opazila, če ne bi bila nominirana za Women's prize for non-fiction. To je bilo moje prvo srečanje s pisateljico in ne bo zadnje, sploh pa mi je bilo všeč, ker je zvočnico sama brala.
Eseji v obliki pisem, v katerih naslavlja tebe (bralko_ca, tujko_ca) in govori tako o svojih izkušnjah izgnanstva zaradi kritike turškega režima in fašizma nasploh, kot o pojmih, ki s tako življensko izkušnjo spreminjajo svoj pomen. Kje je dom? Kaj je dom? Kakšen bo njegov pomen v prihodnosti, sploh če pustimo, da se fašizem razširi?
Zanimive so tudi njene paralele z Odisejado in Itakami. Ja, v množini. Odgovor je v knjigi.
Nation of Strangers je knjiga, ki je mogoče sploh ne bi opazila, če ne bi bila nominirana za Women's prize for non-fiction. To je bilo moje prvo srečanje s pisateljico in ne bo zadnje, sploh pa mi je bilo všeč, ker je zvočnico sama brala.
Eseji v obliki pisem, v katerih naslavlja tebe (bralko_ca, tujko_ca) in govori tako o svojih izkušnjah izgnanstva zaradi kritike turškega režima in fašizma nasploh, kot o pojmih, ki s tako življensko izkušnjo spreminjajo svoj pomen. Kje je dom? Kaj je dom? Kakšen bo njegov pomen v prihodnosti, sploh če pustimo, da se fašizem razširi?
Zanimive so tudi njene paralele z Odisejado in Itakami. Ja, v množini. Odgovor je v knjigi.
April 23, 2026
There are moments of exceptional writing in this book, and I can see why it has received some strong reviews. The author captures inner thoughts and emotional states very well, and there are passages that feel genuinely relatable. The “who we are” section in particular, despite its flaws, had the potential to carry the whole book. The premise itself, that we may all become “strangers” or effectively homeless in a broader sense, is interesting and thought-provoking.
But I had real issues with it.
The central use of “homelessness” felt uncomfortable and, at times, intrusive. There are moments where the author reflects on being “homeless” alongside descriptions of stepping off a yacht in Venice or speaking at high-profile conferences. I understand the sense of dislocation she is trying to convey, but the comparison feels misplaced. It risks diluting the reality of homelessness as experienced by those dealing with immediate and severe precarity.
There are so many almost moments in this book. You can feel the author reaching toward something important, and at times she gets very close. But then it is undercut. For example, celebrating a three-year residency permit by buying an expensive ballgown may reflect relief or a desire for normality, but when placed alongside accounts of displacement, it feels jarring. The book also draws on conversations with people who are genuinely homeless or displaced, yet their lived experiences, shaped by concerns about safety, food, and basic stability, sit uneasily next to the author’s own framing.
What came through for me is a lack of reflection on that imbalance. The book is very focused on the author’s own experience, but does not fully engage with the privilege that shapes it. There is a broader point here, which came up in discussion at book club (there were no good reviews), about political exile. Many individuals in that position are rightly given platforms in academia, journalism, and public discourse, and their experiences matter. But attempts to draw parallels with those who cannot return “home” in a much more immediate and materially precarious sense can risk flattening very different realities.
For me, that tension is never properly addressed. And because of that, the book ends up feeling frustrating. There is a strong idea at its core, and moments of real insight, but it does not quite grapple with the implications of its own framing.
But I had real issues with it.
The central use of “homelessness” felt uncomfortable and, at times, intrusive. There are moments where the author reflects on being “homeless” alongside descriptions of stepping off a yacht in Venice or speaking at high-profile conferences. I understand the sense of dislocation she is trying to convey, but the comparison feels misplaced. It risks diluting the reality of homelessness as experienced by those dealing with immediate and severe precarity.
There are so many almost moments in this book. You can feel the author reaching toward something important, and at times she gets very close. But then it is undercut. For example, celebrating a three-year residency permit by buying an expensive ballgown may reflect relief or a desire for normality, but when placed alongside accounts of displacement, it feels jarring. The book also draws on conversations with people who are genuinely homeless or displaced, yet their lived experiences, shaped by concerns about safety, food, and basic stability, sit uneasily next to the author’s own framing.
What came through for me is a lack of reflection on that imbalance. The book is very focused on the author’s own experience, but does not fully engage with the privilege that shapes it. There is a broader point here, which came up in discussion at book club (there were no good reviews), about political exile. Many individuals in that position are rightly given platforms in academia, journalism, and public discourse, and their experiences matter. But attempts to draw parallels with those who cannot return “home” in a much more immediate and materially precarious sense can risk flattening very different realities.
For me, that tension is never properly addressed. And because of that, the book ends up feeling frustrating. There is a strong idea at its core, and moments of real insight, but it does not quite grapple with the implications of its own framing.
July 7, 2026
„Naród obcych” to skomponowany z listów (autorka zwraca się w nich do czytających zwrotem „droga obca osobo”) manifest humanizmu i solidarności, sprzeciwiający się polityce wykluczania. Apel wzywający do budowania wspólnoty opartej na współodczuwaniu zamiast na lęku przed innością.
A autorka Ece Temelkuran wie o czym mówi, bo sama stała się obcą, najpierw „we własnym domu”, czyli w Turcji, z której musiała uciekać przed prześladowaniami politycznymi. Po ucieczce stała się obcą w innych krajach, w których szukała schronienia. Sama stoi na stanowisku, że dzielenie się swoimi historiami związanymi z wydomowieniem jest dziś niezwykle istotne, dzięki temu nie dzielimy się jeszcze bardziej, bo wbrew pozorom obcość może łączyć. Stąd więc powstanie tej książki.
Autorka zwraca uwagę, że w dzisiejszym świecie „obcy” nie są mniejszością, a wręcz przeciwnie, co powinno nas kierować ku koniecznej solidarności. Przypomina też, że dom można stracić na wiele różnych sposobów. Może to być dom w sensie dosłownym utracony w wyniku kataklizmu, ale także ojczyzna, z której musimy uciekać przed dyktaturą czy wojną. Ale może być to również dom rozumiany metaforycznie, którego utrata może nastąpić, gdy tracimy zaufanie do polityków, przez co stajemy się politycznie bezdomni i wyobcowani. Temelkuran zaznacza, że pierwszym krokiem do zmiany jest uznanie własnej bezdomności, bo bez tego nie zaczniemy działać nad zmianą prowadzącą do solidarności.
To książka pełna przeciekawych rozważań wpisujących się w obecną rzeczywistość, i pozycja otwierająca głowę, która mam nadzieję przyniesie chęć szukania w nas nawzajem wspólnoty, zamiast wiecznie szukać różnic. Jest to teraz szczególnie istotne wobec niebezpiecznie rozwijającego się faszyzmu, zmian klimatu czy innych kryzysów społecznych. A z walorów poza tematycznych - to się po prostu świetnie czyta. Wiem, że to frazes, ale wydaje mi się, że ta przystępność językowa jest przy podejmowaniu takich treści szczególnie ważna. Bardzo polecam!
A autorka Ece Temelkuran wie o czym mówi, bo sama stała się obcą, najpierw „we własnym domu”, czyli w Turcji, z której musiała uciekać przed prześladowaniami politycznymi. Po ucieczce stała się obcą w innych krajach, w których szukała schronienia. Sama stoi na stanowisku, że dzielenie się swoimi historiami związanymi z wydomowieniem jest dziś niezwykle istotne, dzięki temu nie dzielimy się jeszcze bardziej, bo wbrew pozorom obcość może łączyć. Stąd więc powstanie tej książki.
Autorka zwraca uwagę, że w dzisiejszym świecie „obcy” nie są mniejszością, a wręcz przeciwnie, co powinno nas kierować ku koniecznej solidarności. Przypomina też, że dom można stracić na wiele różnych sposobów. Może to być dom w sensie dosłownym utracony w wyniku kataklizmu, ale także ojczyzna, z której musimy uciekać przed dyktaturą czy wojną. Ale może być to również dom rozumiany metaforycznie, którego utrata może nastąpić, gdy tracimy zaufanie do polityków, przez co stajemy się politycznie bezdomni i wyobcowani. Temelkuran zaznacza, że pierwszym krokiem do zmiany jest uznanie własnej bezdomności, bo bez tego nie zaczniemy działać nad zmianą prowadzącą do solidarności.
To książka pełna przeciekawych rozważań wpisujących się w obecną rzeczywistość, i pozycja otwierająca głowę, która mam nadzieję przyniesie chęć szukania w nas nawzajem wspólnoty, zamiast wiecznie szukać różnic. Jest to teraz szczególnie istotne wobec niebezpiecznie rozwijającego się faszyzmu, zmian klimatu czy innych kryzysów społecznych. A z walorów poza tematycznych - to się po prostu świetnie czyta. Wiem, że to frazes, ale wydaje mi się, że ta przystępność językowa jest przy podejmowaniu takich treści szczególnie ważna. Bardzo polecam!
June 13, 2026
Het idee van 'stranger' zijn en het belang van elkaar vinden en elkaars thuis zijn wanneer je thuis om wat voor reden dan ook van je wordt weggenomen (en door die 'nation of strangers' jezelf en je 'zelf' weer terugvinden) wordt echt heel mooi uitgewerkt. "When there is no safe place to hide away from the realities of the world, home will be made of humans who hold you when their hands are already full." (🥺)
April 27, 2026
Powerful. Necessary. Wise.
May 23, 2026
What struck me most about the book is its tendency toward overgeneralisation. Temelkuran writes beautifully at times, and there are passages of genuine emotional insight, but the central metaphor of “homelessness” becomes increasingly unstable the more the book develops.
Ece’s estrangement is ultimately existential and cultural rather than material. She is mourning a loss of belonging within a familiar intellectual and political world; yet the book often frames this experience in language that implicitly gestures toward actual dispossession, exile, or social abandonment. That slippage weakens the argument.
The problem is not that privileged people cannot suffer alienation—they obviously can—but that the book sometimes treats radically different experiences of displacement as emotionally interchangeable. The loneliness of an intellectual exile, the melancholy of cosmopolitan detachment, and the precarity of those who are literally homeless or structurally excluded are not the same phenomenon.
Because the narrative rarely interrogates its own position of privilege, certain emotional passages feel inflated. The rhetoric aims for universality, but instead risks obscuring the concrete realities of class, material insecurity, and social vulnerability.
In the end, the book seems less about homelessness than about the grief of losing a certain idea of home: cultural confidence, political belonging, intellectual recognition, and a familiar social world. That is a legitimate subject, but the book would have been stronger had it acknowledged the limits of its own perspective more explicitly.
Ece’s estrangement is ultimately existential and cultural rather than material. She is mourning a loss of belonging within a familiar intellectual and political world; yet the book often frames this experience in language that implicitly gestures toward actual dispossession, exile, or social abandonment. That slippage weakens the argument.
The problem is not that privileged people cannot suffer alienation—they obviously can—but that the book sometimes treats radically different experiences of displacement as emotionally interchangeable. The loneliness of an intellectual exile, the melancholy of cosmopolitan detachment, and the precarity of those who are literally homeless or structurally excluded are not the same phenomenon.
Because the narrative rarely interrogates its own position of privilege, certain emotional passages feel inflated. The rhetoric aims for universality, but instead risks obscuring the concrete realities of class, material insecurity, and social vulnerability.
In the end, the book seems less about homelessness than about the grief of losing a certain idea of home: cultural confidence, political belonging, intellectual recognition, and a familiar social world. That is a legitimate subject, but the book would have been stronger had it acknowledged the limits of its own perspective more explicitly.
April 26, 2026
The three stars don’t really reflect the quality or the content of the book, but my preferences and taste. I agree with many of Temelkuran‘s points and there are a number of moving scenes, but I never fully clicked with the style. I am sure many will, but for me it seemed over-written and over-intellectualised. I think it also suffered from the comparison with Maria Stepanova‘s The Disappearing Act that tackles some similar themes and that I read roughly at the same time. I loved Stepanova‘s aloof, slightly surreal approach - and perhaps it’s also relevant that her Beast is closer to me than Temelkuran‘s.
June 7, 2026
If all the people who are refugees, displaced by war, violence, politics, and poverty, if everyone who is othered by the structures they live in, came together, they would become the global majority. Ece Temelkuran writes directly to these "strangers", addressed to "you", making the act of reading deeply personal and immediate. Part memoir of her exile from Turkey and subsequent unhoming in Germany, part treatise on humanity, and part playbook for moral survival, Nation of Strangers should be required reading.
One particular section that is burned into my brain is when Temelkuran rewrites the questions immigrants are often asked to get citizenship. She thinks better questions should read: “How much anger are you ready to swallow in order to stay?" "Is there anyone here who can tell you who you are when you lose your sense of self?" And: "Is there anyone you can hug?" These questions cut far deeper to the heart of citizenship than any bureaucratic form ever could.
She relates her journey to Odysseus returning to Ithaca after ten years, but unlike him, she discovers that she has many Ithacas. Home exists in moments of refuge and hospitality, in fleeting experiences and connections across the world. But this is not a book that sweeps things under the rug. Yes, you can find solace, or heimat, in these places and faces, but it is only a small consolation.
What I will take away from this book is similar to what I took away from Paul Lynch's Prophet Song: this unhoming is happening everywhere, and none of us are immune to it, even from the comfort of an ivory tower. It is already on our doorstep, and in the blink of an eye, you too can become a stranger. While the powerful and wealthy work out their interstellar Plan Bs, the rest of us are left trying to survive while retaining our humanity. Temelkuran urges us to resist the mechanisms that seek to divide, dehumanise, and isolate us.
One particular section that is burned into my brain is when Temelkuran rewrites the questions immigrants are often asked to get citizenship. She thinks better questions should read: “How much anger are you ready to swallow in order to stay?" "Is there anyone here who can tell you who you are when you lose your sense of self?" And: "Is there anyone you can hug?" These questions cut far deeper to the heart of citizenship than any bureaucratic form ever could.
She relates her journey to Odysseus returning to Ithaca after ten years, but unlike him, she discovers that she has many Ithacas. Home exists in moments of refuge and hospitality, in fleeting experiences and connections across the world. But this is not a book that sweeps things under the rug. Yes, you can find solace, or heimat, in these places and faces, but it is only a small consolation.
What I will take away from this book is similar to what I took away from Paul Lynch's Prophet Song: this unhoming is happening everywhere, and none of us are immune to it, even from the comfort of an ivory tower. It is already on our doorstep, and in the blink of an eye, you too can become a stranger. While the powerful and wealthy work out their interstellar Plan Bs, the rest of us are left trying to survive while retaining our humanity. Temelkuran urges us to resist the mechanisms that seek to divide, dehumanise, and isolate us.
May 20, 2026
“We are all losing home in some way or another. We are all becoming homeless. We are all being unhomed. Unhomed … an almost forgotten English word from the nineteenth century that deserves a resurrection today, when one can be at home yet still feel outside of it – disassociated, unbelonging, like a stranger.”
I picked up this book whilst in Istanbul in my favourite bookshop and was taken in by its novel letter-writing style. Ece writes to the reader as she experiences being “unhomed” - unable to return to her homeland yes, but more importantly her worrying sense of alienation at the rise of the far-right in multiple nations. It focuses in on what it means to share experiences with others and create this nation of strangers, who are all experiencing such loss and finishes with her reflections that:
“Only those who have never left or lost their home can believe that the Odyssey is about the return to Ithaca. Those who have never seen the monsters will wait impatiently for Odysseus to reach home. One needs to be a stranger to read between the lines and see the friends who are hardly mentioned by name. Once the story begins, the enigma of the destination becomes so compelling that it is easy to miss: the Odyssey has never been a story about returning home. It is an epic about the horrors and desires of the road, but more so the friendships and promises – or better put, the many homes found on the road. And the Odyssey confirms Cavafy’s poem: if you fail to recognise these Ithacas, you are destined to remain unhomed even when at home.”
I found this very moving and very reminiscent of Hannah Arendt at times.
I picked up this book whilst in Istanbul in my favourite bookshop and was taken in by its novel letter-writing style. Ece writes to the reader as she experiences being “unhomed” - unable to return to her homeland yes, but more importantly her worrying sense of alienation at the rise of the far-right in multiple nations. It focuses in on what it means to share experiences with others and create this nation of strangers, who are all experiencing such loss and finishes with her reflections that:
“Only those who have never left or lost their home can believe that the Odyssey is about the return to Ithaca. Those who have never seen the monsters will wait impatiently for Odysseus to reach home. One needs to be a stranger to read between the lines and see the friends who are hardly mentioned by name. Once the story begins, the enigma of the destination becomes so compelling that it is easy to miss: the Odyssey has never been a story about returning home. It is an epic about the horrors and desires of the road, but more so the friendships and promises – or better put, the many homes found on the road. And the Odyssey confirms Cavafy’s poem: if you fail to recognise these Ithacas, you are destined to remain unhomed even when at home.”
I found this very moving and very reminiscent of Hannah Arendt at times.
July 8, 2026
Ece Temelkuran, journalist, political commentator and award-winning writer was fired for writing articles critical of the Turkish government. In 'Nation of Strangers' (long-listed for 2026 Women's Prize for Non-fiction) she explores un-homing by asking four simple questions: who are you, why did you leave, how will you survive here, and when will you go home? With increasing instability from political villainy and climate catastrophe, asking these things only of strangers distracts from the terrifying question: who will we be?
Many are already un-homed. It's not only the displaced, but also the alienated, dropped-out, heretical, misfitted, expatriated, exiled and all those treated as if their only reason for being is to generate profit for big corporations, enabled by the people in power who no longer have our interests at heart. We become a Nation of Strangers when the old realities we depended on no longer apply.
The book addresses the internal problem of neoliberalism (inequality) being at odds with democracy, and the sleep-walk to fascism creeping across some nations. Importantly, an alternative politics of care and trust, even when faced with overwhelming cruelty, is raised for a better future, stating "when there is no safe place to hide away from the realities of the world, home will be made of humans who hold you when their hands are already full". A vital read in this age of tyranny.
Many are already un-homed. It's not only the displaced, but also the alienated, dropped-out, heretical, misfitted, expatriated, exiled and all those treated as if their only reason for being is to generate profit for big corporations, enabled by the people in power who no longer have our interests at heart. We become a Nation of Strangers when the old realities we depended on no longer apply.
The book addresses the internal problem of neoliberalism (inequality) being at odds with democracy, and the sleep-walk to fascism creeping across some nations. Importantly, an alternative politics of care and trust, even when faced with overwhelming cruelty, is raised for a better future, stating "when there is no safe place to hide away from the realities of the world, home will be made of humans who hold you when their hands are already full". A vital read in this age of tyranny.
June 20, 2026
Ece Temelkuran, a Turkish journalist, writes about “the ache of losing home” in her Nation of Strangers. After opposing Erdogan in multiple articles and television appearances, she knew she was no longer safe in her own country. She moved to Croatia and then after six years, decided that she needed a new, safe, home. She is homeless, or unhomed, to use her favorite term.
Temelkuran shares her experience of being not welcome in her home country, by writing a series of letters to us, her readers, or listeners. The letters begin in 2023 and form the base of Nation of Strangers and begin with “Dear Stranger.”
Nation of Strangers is a memoir, of sorts, of how she experiences being unhomed. The letters are often self deprecating and sardonic. She states that we lose our dignity when we are unhomed, homeless, displaced, a stranger, unbelonging, or an immigrant.
Temelkuran warns the strangers of the dangers of fascism and believes that under Donald J Trump, more people will live under fear and become unhomed.
Now that Temelkuran is unhomed she realizes that “home is where joy is” and that “you only have each other in the end.”
Today is she rebuilding a home in Berlin.
I listened to Nation of Strangers which was delightfully narrated by the author, whose first language is not English.
Nation of Strangers was shortlisted for the 2026 Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction.
Temelkuran shares her experience of being not welcome in her home country, by writing a series of letters to us, her readers, or listeners. The letters begin in 2023 and form the base of Nation of Strangers and begin with “Dear Stranger.”
Nation of Strangers is a memoir, of sorts, of how she experiences being unhomed. The letters are often self deprecating and sardonic. She states that we lose our dignity when we are unhomed, homeless, displaced, a stranger, unbelonging, or an immigrant.
Temelkuran warns the strangers of the dangers of fascism and believes that under Donald J Trump, more people will live under fear and become unhomed.
Now that Temelkuran is unhomed she realizes that “home is where joy is” and that “you only have each other in the end.”
Today is she rebuilding a home in Berlin.
I listened to Nation of Strangers which was delightfully narrated by the author, whose first language is not English.
Nation of Strangers was shortlisted for the 2026 Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction.
March 22, 2026
I really enjoyed this one. It sits with you. There’s something in it about never quite feeling at home, a quiet dislocation I recognise from living in the UK. That sense that we’re all just people trying to belong, trying to make somewhere feel like ours.
The provocations land. Especially around how distraction gets weaponised — the rhetoric pulling us apart, missing the deeper truth of what we actually share. Her critique of Keir Starmer is subtle but sharp, particularly the failure to offer any real opposition to Reform. That phrase “island of strangers” is turns it back on itself.
What’s most striking is what sits underneath it all: the refusal to let capitalism off the hook. She keeps pointing to the root, not just the symptoms. And when she asks us to call it what it is, FASCISM, it doesn’t feel exaggerate. One I’ll keep thinking about.
The provocations land. Especially around how distraction gets weaponised — the rhetoric pulling us apart, missing the deeper truth of what we actually share. Her critique of Keir Starmer is subtle but sharp, particularly the failure to offer any real opposition to Reform. That phrase “island of strangers” is turns it back on itself.
What’s most striking is what sits underneath it all: the refusal to let capitalism off the hook. She keeps pointing to the root, not just the symptoms. And when she asks us to call it what it is, FASCISM, it doesn’t feel exaggerate. One I’ll keep thinking about.
May 12, 2026
4,5⭐
gorgeous poetic musings about home and leaving home threaded by real life experiences of a life after having to leave the first place you called home and surviving that bleeding. I highlighted so many turns of phrases - my personal favourite one is that "hugs are body-shaped homes"
gorgeous poetic musings about home and leaving home threaded by real life experiences of a life after having to leave the first place you called home and surviving that bleeding. I highlighted so many turns of phrases - my personal favourite one is that "hugs are body-shaped homes"
July 9, 2026
What a brilliant, thought provoking book!
I devoured it.
Thank you E., for the letters and your thoughts. For all the work you have done and continue doing.
A stranger
thank you @canongate for an example
I devoured it.
Thank you E., for the letters and your thoughts. For all the work you have done and continue doing.
A stranger
thank you @canongate for an example
July 8, 2026
I was overwhelmed by how much I identified with Temelkuran’s life experiences. An incredibly wise book.
May 7, 2026
Lieve Ece dankjewel!! MUST read voor iedereen die zich niet op zijn/haar/hun plek voelt…dan heb je het probleem niet begrepen! Psst… thuis = andere mensen!!
April 26, 2026
Ik had het al aan 5 mensen aangeraden voordat ik het uit had, dat zegt eigenlijk alles al
Read
July 2, 2026“Are you home? Where do you feel at home?”
This is a theme very close to my heart, and the ideas this book presents will live rent-free in my mind. However, I found the language in parts unnecessarily complex in parts, almost as if it was trying too hard to intellectualise itself or inject more sarcasm than the ideas actually needed.
Still, it’s a much-needed and deeply relevant book for our times, whether you’re a "profi" or not.
This is a theme very close to my heart, and the ideas this book presents will live rent-free in my mind. However, I found the language in parts unnecessarily complex in parts, almost as if it was trying too hard to intellectualise itself or inject more sarcasm than the ideas actually needed.
Still, it’s a much-needed and deeply relevant book for our times, whether you’re a "profi" or not.
April 26, 2026
//4.5 stars//
I suprisingly enjoyed this ALOT. A different perspective with GREAT writing!
Written in letter to the reader who Eve calls “Dear Stranger”, we follow her thoughts and experiences around home, identity and belonging across three years. These questions answer four questions: Who Are You? Why Did You Leave? How Will You Survive Here? When Will You Go Home?”
Her tone is often aggressive and corosive, and her warnings feel both scaremongering and darkly true. But the hurt and isolation she captures about being unhomed is incisively true and beautiful. I enjoyed reading this as it is a slightly different perspective from my own that builds upon things I thing and challenges me with things I don’t. This combined with brilliant writing makes it a very propulsive and mind epanding read.
Her letter to a speaking gig that asked her if she is an anti-semite due to a her support of Palestine is brilliant and captures much of what can feel frustrating about the German left wing.
QUOTES:
“I put my heart in the freezer; I envisioned the organ in the fridge. It was to be dealt with later.”
“I wasn't permitted to be human until my life could be deemed a success. But once you lose your home, success
- like the word later - becomes ambiguous and infinite, always beyond reach. Without a home, you lose your command over time, and your worth becomes a matter of debate, decided either by the settled-down folk in the new land or some imagined, higher moral authority back in the old one.”
“The planet, that ticking bomb, becomes our suicide vest to wear. We know that its loss is incomprehensible for the rest of the world, so we look for appealing ways to convey the truth to them. We have cramps in our cheeks while searching for the right kind of smile with which to tell them that the world is ending.”
“When our basic human values don't match up to the blunt cruelty of the new world order, we become morally homeless. Like rough sleepers do with their belongings in supermarket trolleys, we carry our moral values from one shelter to another, trying to find a temporary home for them during this long night of inhumanity. We build small communities that will protect our hearts. We weave intricate connections with people in order to have an emotional roof over our heads.”
“My eyes scanned all the homeless words of history. written in or translated into English. The irony is that English is a language that, until the sixteenth century, had a dictionary that believed strangers were barbarians and, until the eighteenth century, didn't have a word for homesickness. Yet still, English seemed to me like a linguistic river where all the unhomed of the world, the unbelonging beasts, gathered to drink.
The first thing one discovers while bingeing on dead-men-talking is that a silencing spell has been cast on the strangers like us - those with no prospect of going back home. From the very beginning, all the stories of the road have been told only by the travellers who made it back home - a particularly fearful fact for the eternal strangers who simply have no home to go back to. So, my dear stranger, if we do not make it back home, our voice is stolen. How unjust it is, considering that it is the road and those who dare to be on the road that create the story. Yet, only once you return home do you have proof that you have a story to tell.”
“We know that when misery reaches the limits of absurdity, anger becomes a self-destructive luxury.”
“We laugh.Not a real laughter, that one, but an ache of laughter. A signpost at the void where there is supposed to be a language and a single self not split in two: one for the strangers, one for the others. A place-holder, perhaps, until we know who we are.”
“M: What does hope mean to you?
E: I don't believe in hope, but in determination, having faith and doing what you can to survive when there is no hope.
M: Nice answer.
E: Well, I wrote a book about it. Ha!
M: Is hope a good thing or a bad thing?
E: Sometimes it is bad. People wait too long for hope to appear. They are using the word to stop and wait, whereas they can do a lot to survive and for humanity to survive.”
“Everyone lives the life for which they can afford the price.
Remember when, in the very beginning, I said having to start everything from scratch was a more affordable price for me compared to being paralysed with fear back home? And I paid it only when the fear became unbearable.” ⭐️
“Walking towards the east, the many memorials of Berlin's dark past begin to pop up. This city lives in a unique time zone, where past, present and future tenses collapse into one another, like an accordion being stretched and then compressed. The many whys of the past intertwine seamlessly as I walk around with my own questions.”
“There will be no explicit agreement needed, but gradually, people will avoid that one word that is deemed 'problematic'. It is the word genocide in Germany today; in other countries, it will be other words.
The gap left behind by that one lost word will soon be filled with harmless words kindly suggested by the power-approved words, such as war, even though the other side is primarily civilians. 'Let's not call it a genocide but "atrocities"? Eventually, it will become impossible to join the public conversation without uttering only those approved words. They will operate
-as signal flares to show that you are not using the criminalised word. This is how fascism works. It not only silences people but also forces them to speak in a certain way.”
“But if you ask me what kind of home I search for, I cannot think of anything other than my legacy.
When I say legacy, I mean the experience of having lived this life. That is the only home I can think of.” ⭐️
“I responded with a Turkish saying: "The wolf survives the winter but never forgets the black frost?
But then, 1 am not sure. Perhaps spring means forgetting, and so does survival - a set of complex choices about what to remember.”
“The stranger becomes disinterested in those who have not endured a similar test of survival. This solitude can be shared only by those whose bodies, like litmus paper, have been dipped in the acid of survival and been irreversibly and fundamentally changed by it.”
“The loss of home is irreversible. No return journey tomorrow can reach a place of yesterday. Once you leave, 'back at home' is over.”
“'So what do we do now?'
'So much. So much!' I told her.
She tentatively asked, 'So there is hope, you say?'
'Forget about hope, I replied. 'There is me, and there is you. That's it. This is our new home now, you and me and all the others like us. That's what we'll have to work with.'” ⭐️
“Yet they will still, in their hearts, carry that old story of home, where the road means nothing until you arrive back at the old home. This is all because, since the Odyssey was written, only the return has given meaning to the journey. The road is deemed pointless unless it circles back home. Odysseus was a floating stranger, a nobody unless recognised back home. His story was told only in hindsight after he made it back to Ithaca, his island. Otherwise, there wouldn't have been a record, all would have been left in the dark, the obscure universe of strangers. And the gravity of the story endured as the cities stood still. But now, as the cities, physical or virtual, are coming down ...”
“It is the loss of faith in the home, in the self and in others. That is total darkness, the ultimate shade of black. There, the stranger can still do everything that imitates life - eating, working, having sex, ageing, laughing, drinking, planning things for next summer - yet without the essential joy of life.”
“We know that home is, in fact, other people. Fear unhomes the human. Love accommodates.”
I suprisingly enjoyed this ALOT. A different perspective with GREAT writing!
Written in letter to the reader who Eve calls “Dear Stranger”, we follow her thoughts and experiences around home, identity and belonging across three years. These questions answer four questions: Who Are You? Why Did You Leave? How Will You Survive Here? When Will You Go Home?”
Her tone is often aggressive and corosive, and her warnings feel both scaremongering and darkly true. But the hurt and isolation she captures about being unhomed is incisively true and beautiful. I enjoyed reading this as it is a slightly different perspective from my own that builds upon things I thing and challenges me with things I don’t. This combined with brilliant writing makes it a very propulsive and mind epanding read.
Her letter to a speaking gig that asked her if she is an anti-semite due to a her support of Palestine is brilliant and captures much of what can feel frustrating about the German left wing.
QUOTES:
“I put my heart in the freezer; I envisioned the organ in the fridge. It was to be dealt with later.”
“I wasn't permitted to be human until my life could be deemed a success. But once you lose your home, success
- like the word later - becomes ambiguous and infinite, always beyond reach. Without a home, you lose your command over time, and your worth becomes a matter of debate, decided either by the settled-down folk in the new land or some imagined, higher moral authority back in the old one.”
“The planet, that ticking bomb, becomes our suicide vest to wear. We know that its loss is incomprehensible for the rest of the world, so we look for appealing ways to convey the truth to them. We have cramps in our cheeks while searching for the right kind of smile with which to tell them that the world is ending.”
“When our basic human values don't match up to the blunt cruelty of the new world order, we become morally homeless. Like rough sleepers do with their belongings in supermarket trolleys, we carry our moral values from one shelter to another, trying to find a temporary home for them during this long night of inhumanity. We build small communities that will protect our hearts. We weave intricate connections with people in order to have an emotional roof over our heads.”
“My eyes scanned all the homeless words of history. written in or translated into English. The irony is that English is a language that, until the sixteenth century, had a dictionary that believed strangers were barbarians and, until the eighteenth century, didn't have a word for homesickness. Yet still, English seemed to me like a linguistic river where all the unhomed of the world, the unbelonging beasts, gathered to drink.
The first thing one discovers while bingeing on dead-men-talking is that a silencing spell has been cast on the strangers like us - those with no prospect of going back home. From the very beginning, all the stories of the road have been told only by the travellers who made it back home - a particularly fearful fact for the eternal strangers who simply have no home to go back to. So, my dear stranger, if we do not make it back home, our voice is stolen. How unjust it is, considering that it is the road and those who dare to be on the road that create the story. Yet, only once you return home do you have proof that you have a story to tell.”
“We know that when misery reaches the limits of absurdity, anger becomes a self-destructive luxury.”
“We laugh.Not a real laughter, that one, but an ache of laughter. A signpost at the void where there is supposed to be a language and a single self not split in two: one for the strangers, one for the others. A place-holder, perhaps, until we know who we are.”
“M: What does hope mean to you?
E: I don't believe in hope, but in determination, having faith and doing what you can to survive when there is no hope.
M: Nice answer.
E: Well, I wrote a book about it. Ha!
M: Is hope a good thing or a bad thing?
E: Sometimes it is bad. People wait too long for hope to appear. They are using the word to stop and wait, whereas they can do a lot to survive and for humanity to survive.”
“Everyone lives the life for which they can afford the price.
Remember when, in the very beginning, I said having to start everything from scratch was a more affordable price for me compared to being paralysed with fear back home? And I paid it only when the fear became unbearable.” ⭐️
“Walking towards the east, the many memorials of Berlin's dark past begin to pop up. This city lives in a unique time zone, where past, present and future tenses collapse into one another, like an accordion being stretched and then compressed. The many whys of the past intertwine seamlessly as I walk around with my own questions.”
“There will be no explicit agreement needed, but gradually, people will avoid that one word that is deemed 'problematic'. It is the word genocide in Germany today; in other countries, it will be other words.
The gap left behind by that one lost word will soon be filled with harmless words kindly suggested by the power-approved words, such as war, even though the other side is primarily civilians. 'Let's not call it a genocide but "atrocities"? Eventually, it will become impossible to join the public conversation without uttering only those approved words. They will operate
-as signal flares to show that you are not using the criminalised word. This is how fascism works. It not only silences people but also forces them to speak in a certain way.”
“But if you ask me what kind of home I search for, I cannot think of anything other than my legacy.
When I say legacy, I mean the experience of having lived this life. That is the only home I can think of.” ⭐️
“I responded with a Turkish saying: "The wolf survives the winter but never forgets the black frost?
But then, 1 am not sure. Perhaps spring means forgetting, and so does survival - a set of complex choices about what to remember.”
“The stranger becomes disinterested in those who have not endured a similar test of survival. This solitude can be shared only by those whose bodies, like litmus paper, have been dipped in the acid of survival and been irreversibly and fundamentally changed by it.”
“The loss of home is irreversible. No return journey tomorrow can reach a place of yesterday. Once you leave, 'back at home' is over.”
“'So what do we do now?'
'So much. So much!' I told her.
She tentatively asked, 'So there is hope, you say?'
'Forget about hope, I replied. 'There is me, and there is you. That's it. This is our new home now, you and me and all the others like us. That's what we'll have to work with.'” ⭐️
“Yet they will still, in their hearts, carry that old story of home, where the road means nothing until you arrive back at the old home. This is all because, since the Odyssey was written, only the return has given meaning to the journey. The road is deemed pointless unless it circles back home. Odysseus was a floating stranger, a nobody unless recognised back home. His story was told only in hindsight after he made it back to Ithaca, his island. Otherwise, there wouldn't have been a record, all would have been left in the dark, the obscure universe of strangers. And the gravity of the story endured as the cities stood still. But now, as the cities, physical or virtual, are coming down ...”
“It is the loss of faith in the home, in the self and in others. That is total darkness, the ultimate shade of black. There, the stranger can still do everything that imitates life - eating, working, having sex, ageing, laughing, drinking, planning things for next summer - yet without the essential joy of life.”
“We know that home is, in fact, other people. Fear unhomes the human. Love accommodates.”
May 25, 2026
Like the vulnerability and candid. Little disappointed by the lack of more authentic and holistic description in the lives of refugees. and I didn’t finish the last bit but she never really touched on the actual structural and ideology of this nation, which I thought, by the name of the book, she would heavily argue, rather, just observations as a total outsider, as a privileged intellectual refugee — can’t blend in with the Western Europeans, can’t really connect with the vast majority of the refugees of current days.
May 16, 2026
There are moments of phenomenal power and some stunning writing in Nation of Strangers. And many of Temelkuran's political points are very timely and very, very necessary. But, while I understand the feeling of disconnecteness she was expressing, I felt somewhat uncomfortable with the lack of acknowledgement of her relative privilege (as compared, for example, with some of the individuals she intersects with in the course of the memoir) when discussing their respective experiences of "homelessness".
March 19, 2026
‘Nation of Strangers is perhaps the most urgent and necessary book of our times, for our times. To read it is “to stiffen the sinews.”’
- Michael Morpugo
When Sir Keir Starmer used the term ‘island of strangers’ in 2025, he was rightfully criticised and castigated for the unhelpful ‘othering’ and distancing from other human beings in need of a home. Deep down, below the political shock headlines and nuance, perhaps he was more right than even he could have dreamed- that being a ‘Nation of Strangers’ and acknowledging our similarities and shared humanity may be the only way to rebuild the home, which all of us are in danger of losing.
Ece Temelkuran’s usage of ‘Nation of Strangers’ goes far in accepting that around the world today, people are not ‘exiles’, seeking some cloak of political ‘rightness’ and ‘justness’, but nor are they ‘migrants’ with all the attendant legal and political connotations. They are ‘displaced’ in the truest sense of the word- displaced not just geographically, but also temporally- they exist outside time metaphorically- waiting for residency status, waiting for visas, simply just waiting in a ‘permanent temporality’ as Temelkuran describes.
They are simply people seeking a home. We are simply people seeking a home.
Temelkuran suggests that there has been a withdrawing by some people, as a survival mechanism- one which protects and shields them from newly ‘elected’ fascist leaders; politicians who drive a wedge between ‘us’ and ‘them’ simply for election purposes and those who wish to hide from an increasingly uncaring world. ‘Or perhaps the radical immorality of a leader is suddenly normalised even by our friends. A tear opens deep down in our sense of belonging. The tear eventually articulated as an aching sentence: ‘I don’t recognise this place; this is not my country anymore.’ We miss our country while still living in it.’
Some of my American friends are embarrassed and shamed by the current leadership of their country and this shame shakes their sense of identity. Some of my British friends are also similarly embarrassed and shamed by the emboldened far right voices in this country who advocate sharply against migration and create dehumanised monsters of those seeking a home to turn welcome into fear. And they are emboldened by the sudden silence of the majority, who recognise that for the grace of God, anyone can be ‘homeless’, whether this is a loss of identity and value, or a loss of accommodation.
‘That is why many, too many of us, decide every day to turn ourselves into unfeeling creatures so that we can function as survival automatons. These times are orphaning all that is humane. An uncaring world is in the making, and it will unhome humans like you and me.’
A Nomad Century
Gaia Vince writes about the large numbers of migrants that the 21st century will be driven to, owing to the unchecked climate crisis in ‘A Noam Century’. As Temelkuran also notes, ‘Scientists report that by 2050, 1.5 billion people will have to leave their homes, and by 2070, 3 billion people will have become refugees.’ Unless we begin to open our hearts again into the understanding that we once had, of our shared humanity, we are in danger of losing all joy and happiness. ‘Some of us sit down and calculate when the rising sea or another wildfire will swallow up or land to make us homeless. We watch the water or the flames creeping further every year, centimetre by centimetre. The planet, that ticking bomb, becomes our suicide vest to wear.’
Temelkuran repeatedly urges throughout the book that this journey which we are on, is an inward journey, rather than an external journey to the many Ithacas of our identities and lives. From the very beginning, all the stories of the road have been told only by the travellers who made it back home…if we do not make it back home, our voice is stolen.’ Another journey lies ahead of us- a journey of rebuilding a community of strangers.
‘As much as it is about you and me, this is a journey towards the unhomed heart of humanity.’
She argues that, ‘Home, I believe, is the closet word to all of our hearts. And the idea of building a new home together, I hoped would recharge you- and me- with the joy of life.’
Temelkuran structures her writing both chronologically and focused on the somewhat charged questions of ‘Who are you? Why did you leave? How will you survive here? When will you go home?’. We are meant to recognise these questions- ones which give definite answers- are only supposed to be asked of those who are ‘other’ and challenge us to answer them ourselves. In our lives, we may be far from ‘home’, a place and a time of safety and innocence.
‘We are all losing home in some way or another. We are all becoming homeless. We are all being unhomed. Unhomed…’
Temelkuran inverts Sartre’s quotation, ‘Hell is other people’ in ‘No Exit’, where our self- image and worth is decided by the perceptions of others, turning us into objects, rather than the verbs that we are. Temelkuran emphatically and conclusively states, ‘We know that home is, in fact, other people.’
Home has always been an idea of creation, of ‘building a home, building a nest and then leaving the nest. We can belong again, we can belong together, we can make it back home and sing out our voices confidently into the joyous skies. We no longer need to fear that home might no longer recognise us.
Home is waiting for us.
- Michael Morpugo
When Sir Keir Starmer used the term ‘island of strangers’ in 2025, he was rightfully criticised and castigated for the unhelpful ‘othering’ and distancing from other human beings in need of a home. Deep down, below the political shock headlines and nuance, perhaps he was more right than even he could have dreamed- that being a ‘Nation of Strangers’ and acknowledging our similarities and shared humanity may be the only way to rebuild the home, which all of us are in danger of losing.
Ece Temelkuran’s usage of ‘Nation of Strangers’ goes far in accepting that around the world today, people are not ‘exiles’, seeking some cloak of political ‘rightness’ and ‘justness’, but nor are they ‘migrants’ with all the attendant legal and political connotations. They are ‘displaced’ in the truest sense of the word- displaced not just geographically, but also temporally- they exist outside time metaphorically- waiting for residency status, waiting for visas, simply just waiting in a ‘permanent temporality’ as Temelkuran describes.
They are simply people seeking a home. We are simply people seeking a home.
Temelkuran suggests that there has been a withdrawing by some people, as a survival mechanism- one which protects and shields them from newly ‘elected’ fascist leaders; politicians who drive a wedge between ‘us’ and ‘them’ simply for election purposes and those who wish to hide from an increasingly uncaring world. ‘Or perhaps the radical immorality of a leader is suddenly normalised even by our friends. A tear opens deep down in our sense of belonging. The tear eventually articulated as an aching sentence: ‘I don’t recognise this place; this is not my country anymore.’ We miss our country while still living in it.’
Some of my American friends are embarrassed and shamed by the current leadership of their country and this shame shakes their sense of identity. Some of my British friends are also similarly embarrassed and shamed by the emboldened far right voices in this country who advocate sharply against migration and create dehumanised monsters of those seeking a home to turn welcome into fear. And they are emboldened by the sudden silence of the majority, who recognise that for the grace of God, anyone can be ‘homeless’, whether this is a loss of identity and value, or a loss of accommodation.
‘That is why many, too many of us, decide every day to turn ourselves into unfeeling creatures so that we can function as survival automatons. These times are orphaning all that is humane. An uncaring world is in the making, and it will unhome humans like you and me.’
A Nomad Century
Gaia Vince writes about the large numbers of migrants that the 21st century will be driven to, owing to the unchecked climate crisis in ‘A Noam Century’. As Temelkuran also notes, ‘Scientists report that by 2050, 1.5 billion people will have to leave their homes, and by 2070, 3 billion people will have become refugees.’ Unless we begin to open our hearts again into the understanding that we once had, of our shared humanity, we are in danger of losing all joy and happiness. ‘Some of us sit down and calculate when the rising sea or another wildfire will swallow up or land to make us homeless. We watch the water or the flames creeping further every year, centimetre by centimetre. The planet, that ticking bomb, becomes our suicide vest to wear.’
Temelkuran repeatedly urges throughout the book that this journey which we are on, is an inward journey, rather than an external journey to the many Ithacas of our identities and lives. From the very beginning, all the stories of the road have been told only by the travellers who made it back home…if we do not make it back home, our voice is stolen.’ Another journey lies ahead of us- a journey of rebuilding a community of strangers.
‘As much as it is about you and me, this is a journey towards the unhomed heart of humanity.’
She argues that, ‘Home, I believe, is the closet word to all of our hearts. And the idea of building a new home together, I hoped would recharge you- and me- with the joy of life.’
Temelkuran structures her writing both chronologically and focused on the somewhat charged questions of ‘Who are you? Why did you leave? How will you survive here? When will you go home?’. We are meant to recognise these questions- ones which give definite answers- are only supposed to be asked of those who are ‘other’ and challenge us to answer them ourselves. In our lives, we may be far from ‘home’, a place and a time of safety and innocence.
‘We are all losing home in some way or another. We are all becoming homeless. We are all being unhomed. Unhomed…’
Temelkuran inverts Sartre’s quotation, ‘Hell is other people’ in ‘No Exit’, where our self- image and worth is decided by the perceptions of others, turning us into objects, rather than the verbs that we are. Temelkuran emphatically and conclusively states, ‘We know that home is, in fact, other people.’
Home has always been an idea of creation, of ‘building a home, building a nest and then leaving the nest. We can belong again, we can belong together, we can make it back home and sing out our voices confidently into the joyous skies. We no longer need to fear that home might no longer recognise us.
Home is waiting for us.
May 7, 2026
Library book, chosen as it was shortlisted for the women's prize for non fiction 2026.
I feel I have to give this book at least 3 stars because of what it stands for- it's an anti fascist love letter to those forced to leave their home. But I hated the structure of letters to the reader- it didn't work for me at all and I found the writers philosophical tangents bewildering at times.
I feel I have to give this book at least 3 stars because of what it stands for- it's an anti fascist love letter to those forced to leave their home. But I hated the structure of letters to the reader- it didn't work for me at all and I found the writers philosophical tangents bewildering at times.
June 13, 2026
If you only read one non-fiction this year, let it be this one. Buckle up, this is gonna be a long post.
“Nation of Strangers” is a timely read, as many of the things I have felt for the past several months have been articulated by Ece Temelkuran with so much empathy and precision. Banned indefinitely from entering her home country, Temelkuran pens her thoughts on her experience with how being a political refugee due to the rising fascism in Turkey has made her realize several things: eventually, the majority of the population will be ‘homeless’ in the sense that they could not return to their home countries for various reasons.
Dubbed as a ‘political Cassandra’ for our times, Temelkuran has seen firsthand how a country can descend into fascism while its citizens continue to deny the new realities, and she has been raising the alarms to the rest of the world — at least to those who wants to listen — on the fact that she has seen the worrying trends and signs of this upheaval coming for the rest of the world. True enough, we now see the rise in fascism, dictatorship, tech surveillance, et al. happening in real-time globally, all while we continue to remain in the ‘denial stage’.
One of my main gripes with lauded narratives that are focused on the past is the fact that it feels like most authors are writing it from a place of complacency. At this point, do we really need a Nazi WW2 novel to remind us of the dangers of fascism when we are living it in the present? Temelkuran’s writing captured that feeling perfectly. At some point, everyone has to realize that several of these effing plays are really about us.
Also, one of the chapters that stayed with me was one where Temelkuran was invited to a get-together conference at a high-end place by mistake; she only realized that it was basically a f*scist techno-feudo lords staycation until it was too late. But it did give us a lot of insight into how these people think. The richest man in attendance said clearly what they all are brave enough to say out loud: they want to spread fascism & America's brand of it to the rest of the world. I repeat: They're not even hiding themselves anymore.
Throughout those several pages in the chapter, it became clear to Temelkuran that these people who are so keen to move fast & break things don't care about the consequences. They don't care what happens to the 99%, they don't care if there's no one left to buy their manufactured goods because if we let them win, there'll only be one class: the tech overlords, who will control every single movement of our lives like what happened to the P*lestini@ns, and us, the labor that will give them their resources to live luxuriously.
You may think this is hyperbole. It is not.
Through several essays penned in the style of letters she is sending to us, the strangers of the world, Temelkuran warns everyone of the dangers of letting fascism, dictatorship, and globalized late-stage capitalism dictate our future. If we continue to blithely enjoy the spoils of the world offered by the exploitation of labor and resources, we will all eventually become a perpetual Odysseus in search of a home. While the letters serve as a warning, they also provide some hope for readers in the form of advice on how we can rebuild such homes wherever we may land. There may well be a time when everyone becomes an unmoored stranger living nomadic lives — and won't that be ironic, that we'd all have to return to our ancestors' nomadic past in search of safety and resources for our livelihood?
What Temelkuran wrote about resonates with me so much because it voices what I've been feeling for the past few months, if not years. People continue to watch The Hunger Games while an actual dystopic reality descends on the citizens of certain US cities via ICE raids; Japan, US & EU are trying to pass a law to deport some of the acclimatized & naturalized citizens to a country they have never been to; some read about fascist regimes in the past without seeing & caring about what's growing in their own backyard while they continue to support the systemic suppression of their own selves; some won't care what happens to the environment due to their support of exploitative and unsustainable practices until they realize they won't have clean water to drink. I'm not trying to be a defeatist, but being a political Cassandra comes with the burden of knowing what kind of shit is going to be hitting the fan and how soon that spatter is about to come.
With all the recent unrest on the status of certain refugees in Malaysia, we should all acquaint ourselves with the idea that sooner or later, all of us may become unmoored 'refugees' in this lifetime, regardless of the seemingly stable lifestyle people are enjoying now. When shit really hits the fan, everyone's going to feel it.
“Nation of Strangers” is a timely read, as many of the things I have felt for the past several months have been articulated by Ece Temelkuran with so much empathy and precision. Banned indefinitely from entering her home country, Temelkuran pens her thoughts on her experience with how being a political refugee due to the rising fascism in Turkey has made her realize several things: eventually, the majority of the population will be ‘homeless’ in the sense that they could not return to their home countries for various reasons.
Dubbed as a ‘political Cassandra’ for our times, Temelkuran has seen firsthand how a country can descend into fascism while its citizens continue to deny the new realities, and she has been raising the alarms to the rest of the world — at least to those who wants to listen — on the fact that she has seen the worrying trends and signs of this upheaval coming for the rest of the world. True enough, we now see the rise in fascism, dictatorship, tech surveillance, et al. happening in real-time globally, all while we continue to remain in the ‘denial stage’.
One of my main gripes with lauded narratives that are focused on the past is the fact that it feels like most authors are writing it from a place of complacency. At this point, do we really need a Nazi WW2 novel to remind us of the dangers of fascism when we are living it in the present? Temelkuran’s writing captured that feeling perfectly. At some point, everyone has to realize that several of these effing plays are really about us.
Also, one of the chapters that stayed with me was one where Temelkuran was invited to a get-together conference at a high-end place by mistake; she only realized that it was basically a f*scist techno-feudo lords staycation until it was too late. But it did give us a lot of insight into how these people think. The richest man in attendance said clearly what they all are brave enough to say out loud: they want to spread fascism & America's brand of it to the rest of the world. I repeat: They're not even hiding themselves anymore.
Throughout those several pages in the chapter, it became clear to Temelkuran that these people who are so keen to move fast & break things don't care about the consequences. They don't care what happens to the 99%, they don't care if there's no one left to buy their manufactured goods because if we let them win, there'll only be one class: the tech overlords, who will control every single movement of our lives like what happened to the P*lestini@ns, and us, the labor that will give them their resources to live luxuriously.
You may think this is hyperbole. It is not.
Through several essays penned in the style of letters she is sending to us, the strangers of the world, Temelkuran warns everyone of the dangers of letting fascism, dictatorship, and globalized late-stage capitalism dictate our future. If we continue to blithely enjoy the spoils of the world offered by the exploitation of labor and resources, we will all eventually become a perpetual Odysseus in search of a home. While the letters serve as a warning, they also provide some hope for readers in the form of advice on how we can rebuild such homes wherever we may land. There may well be a time when everyone becomes an unmoored stranger living nomadic lives — and won't that be ironic, that we'd all have to return to our ancestors' nomadic past in search of safety and resources for our livelihood?
What Temelkuran wrote about resonates with me so much because it voices what I've been feeling for the past few months, if not years. People continue to watch The Hunger Games while an actual dystopic reality descends on the citizens of certain US cities via ICE raids; Japan, US & EU are trying to pass a law to deport some of the acclimatized & naturalized citizens to a country they have never been to; some read about fascist regimes in the past without seeing & caring about what's growing in their own backyard while they continue to support the systemic suppression of their own selves; some won't care what happens to the environment due to their support of exploitative and unsustainable practices until they realize they won't have clean water to drink. I'm not trying to be a defeatist, but being a political Cassandra comes with the burden of knowing what kind of shit is going to be hitting the fan and how soon that spatter is about to come.
With all the recent unrest on the status of certain refugees in Malaysia, we should all acquaint ourselves with the idea that sooner or later, all of us may become unmoored 'refugees' in this lifetime, regardless of the seemingly stable lifestyle people are enjoying now. When shit really hits the fan, everyone's going to feel it.
June 27, 2026
Fifty or so letters addressed to "Dear Stranger", written between September 2022 and April 2025, chart Ece Temelkuran's exile from Turkey. Divided into four sections—identity, leaving, survival and the possibility of returning—they develop themes that culminate in the book's central claim: "…the emergence of a nation of strangers" is a consequence of "reality collapse—we will have only each other to confirm that we are real and that we have agency."
Ece Temelkuran’s letters reflect a grim progress over her two and a half years and no doubt intends her subtitle: ‘rebuilding home in the C21st’ to sit somewhere between irony and hope, if, as seems likely, the "techno-feud lords" tighten their grip then ‘you draw the boundaries of your existence with negations. The self is a hollow space (‘like a black box of sorrows’) of which you can only make out the borders.’ (p.178). Concurrently reading M John Harrison short stories he writes in ‘Please don’t think to look at yourself’ about displacement and alienation as ‘decaying trajectories…In the sense that you have reduced your options according to an inner program you don’t understand but which is obvious to anyone who has known you longer than a year. In the failure to be shameless. In a concrete pipe, or on a large ship. In a Turkish film.’ [‘You should come with me now: stories of ghosts’ (2017)]. Ghosts, strangers, mere data traces: humanity's bonds split ever further apart.
In a world where individuals, let alone exiles, can no longer make meaningful choices—or can no longer believe those choices genuinely belong to them—how do they remain recognisably the same people? One might imagine the "techno-feud lords" would understand this. Instead, they seem more anxious that the vassals serving and protecting them in their bunkers might rebel...or as is being argued the system itself may takeover!
Temelkuran's letters are about recognition. Her phrase, "we will have only each other to confirm that we are real," recalls not only political philosophy but also Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's idea that self-consciousness requires recognition by another consciousness. Without mutual recognition, agency becomes difficult to sustain because there is no longer a shared world in which our actions can acquire meaning. That is why her repeated salutation, "Dear Stranger," is so moving. It is not simply a literary device but an act of recognition addressed to someone whose identity is uncertain but whose humanity is not. In a world threatened by "reality collapse," the simple act of addressing another person becomes a form of resistance. These letters speak directly to us as readers. Letters remain one of the oldest ways of affirming another person's existence across distance, exile and uncertainty. The question Temelkuran leaves us with is whether we can recover that mutual recognition—and with it our agency—before it is too late.
Ece Temelkuran’s letters reflect a grim progress over her two and a half years and no doubt intends her subtitle: ‘rebuilding home in the C21st’ to sit somewhere between irony and hope, if, as seems likely, the "techno-feud lords" tighten their grip then ‘you draw the boundaries of your existence with negations. The self is a hollow space (‘like a black box of sorrows’) of which you can only make out the borders.’ (p.178). Concurrently reading M John Harrison short stories he writes in ‘Please don’t think to look at yourself’ about displacement and alienation as ‘decaying trajectories…In the sense that you have reduced your options according to an inner program you don’t understand but which is obvious to anyone who has known you longer than a year. In the failure to be shameless. In a concrete pipe, or on a large ship. In a Turkish film.’ [‘You should come with me now: stories of ghosts’ (2017)]. Ghosts, strangers, mere data traces: humanity's bonds split ever further apart.
In a world where individuals, let alone exiles, can no longer make meaningful choices—or can no longer believe those choices genuinely belong to them—how do they remain recognisably the same people? One might imagine the "techno-feud lords" would understand this. Instead, they seem more anxious that the vassals serving and protecting them in their bunkers might rebel...or as is being argued the system itself may takeover!
Temelkuran's letters are about recognition. Her phrase, "we will have only each other to confirm that we are real," recalls not only political philosophy but also Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's idea that self-consciousness requires recognition by another consciousness. Without mutual recognition, agency becomes difficult to sustain because there is no longer a shared world in which our actions can acquire meaning. That is why her repeated salutation, "Dear Stranger," is so moving. It is not simply a literary device but an act of recognition addressed to someone whose identity is uncertain but whose humanity is not. In a world threatened by "reality collapse," the simple act of addressing another person becomes a form of resistance. These letters speak directly to us as readers. Letters remain one of the oldest ways of affirming another person's existence across distance, exile and uncertainty. The question Temelkuran leaves us with is whether we can recover that mutual recognition—and with it our agency—before it is too late.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 69 reviews