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Snapping Point
‘But for that slender connection with the mainland, Andalıç would have been a regular island,’ says Aslı Biçen in the opening chapter of this deliciously multi-layered novel. And it would have been an ordinary story about love and loss, if it weren't for the earthquake that unexpectedly sets the landmass afloat on the Aegean, kindling a series of increasingly oppressive measures by the authorities; ostensibly to keep public order. As Andalıç drifts between Greece and Turkey, things get from bad to worse, until eventually our heroes, Cemal and Jülide, join the growing resistance, and even nature lends a helping hand, offering a secret underground system that plays its part in ousting the tyranny.
What starts as the realistic tale of a charming provincial town develops into a richly detailed political novel in a fantastic setting. Biçen’s dreamy language weaves a flowing style that transports the reader into every nook and cranny of Andalıç and the crystal-clear waters of the Aegean; her metaphors are imaginative, her observations insightful, and her descriptions melodious.
What starts as the realistic tale of a charming provincial town develops into a richly detailed political novel in a fantastic setting. Biçen’s dreamy language weaves a flowing style that transports the reader into every nook and cranny of Andalıç and the crystal-clear waters of the Aegean; her metaphors are imaginative, her observations insightful, and her descriptions melodious.
299 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2008
4 people are currently reading
222 people want to read
About the author
Aslı Biçen
68 books20 followers 1970’te Bursa’da doğdu. Boğaziçi Üniversitesi, İngiliz Filolojisi Bölümü’nü bitirdi. Julio Cortazar’dan 62 Maket Seti’ni, Djuna Barnes’tan Geceyi Anlat Bana’yı, Carlos Fuentes’ten Doğmamış Kristof’u, Salman Rushdie’den Geceyarısı Çocukları’nı, John Fowles’tan Fransız Teğmenin Kadını’nı dilimize çevirdi.
William Faulkner’dan Abşalom, Abşalom! ve Charles Dickens’tan Kasvetli Ev 2001’de, Louis Breger’den çevirdiği Freud: Görüntünün Ortasındaki Karanlık ve Isaac Bashevis Singer’ın Toplu Öyküler’i 2002’de Yapı Kredi Yayınları tarafından yayımlandı.
William Faulkner’dan Abşalom, Abşalom! ve Charles Dickens’tan Kasvetli Ev 2001’de, Louis Breger’den çevirdiği Freud: Görüntünün Ortasındaki Karanlık ve Isaac Bashevis Singer’ın Toplu Öyküler’i 2002’de Yapı Kredi Yayınları tarafından yayımlandı.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
March 22, 2021
Snapping Point is the latest book from one of the UK’s most consistently excellent publishers, Istros Books, which focuses on translated literature typically from south-east Europe and the Balkans.
It was translated into English (at times using a very English, even London, vernacular) by Feyza Howell, who also translated the wonderful The Highly Unreliable Account of the History of a Madhouse, from the Turkish language original İnceldiği Yerden (2008) by Aslı Biçen. Aslı Biçen herself, as well as being a novelist (this was her 2nd novel) is one of Turkey’s most renowned translators from English, covering authors from Dickens, through Faulkner, to Rushdie.
The novel opens:
A lacklustre glow to the right of the road heralded daybreak, rising between a pair of barren hills flung together carelessly like stunted teeth, as if somehow mislaid on the plain. Having traversed the length of the night and consumed not the miles but the hours, the coach was on its triumphant advance towards the final few minutes. The sun cast the morning from the V of the hills onto the fields nearest the road with the impatience of a catapulted stone, faster and brighter as than when setting. A nebulous wave rippled the crisp green knee-high wheat, which resembled an underwater scene in the subdued light.
With even the most resilient of the passengers having succumbed to an exhausted sleep or a groggy headache after countless hours of shuddering, the dream-heavy coach dipped into, and rose back out of, a deep pothole. Cemal who had been asleep for hours with the ease of a seasoned long-distance traveller, banged his head on the rock-hard windowpane. His eyes opened sightlessly.
Yolun sağında, ihmalkârlıkla ovada unutulmuş gibi duran iki kıraç, eğreti tepenin güdük dişleri arasında güneş fersiz bir aydınlıkla gelişini duyurdu. Geceyi baştan sona kat eden otobüs yoldan ziyade saatlerle cebelleşmiş, geriye kalan son dakikaların üzerinde zaferle ilerliyordu. Tepelerin V'sindeki güneş sapan taşı sabırsızlığıyla, her zamanki gibi battığından daha hızlı ve daha parlak, yola yakın tarlalara sabahı düşürdü. Diz boyu buğdayların taze yeşili, ketlenmiş ışıkta, deniz altı düzlüklerine has bir su buğusuyla dalgalanmaya başladı.
Sarsıntılı uzun saatlerin ardından en inatçı yolcusu bile baygın bir uykuya ya da başağrılı bir sersemliğe teslim olmuş otobüs, yoldaki derin çukura, rüya yükünün bütün ağırlığıyla dalıp çıktı. Yılların uzun yolculuk alışkanlığıyla derin bir uykuyu saatlerdir sürdürmeyi başarmış olan Cemal'in savrulan başı taş gibi cama çarptı. Gözleri açıldı ama görmeye değil.
Cemal, a grocer, is returning to his hometown, after another false alarm in his fruitless search for his father, who left home twenty years earlier. That hometown is Andalıç, connected to the Turkish mainland by a one mile isthmus:
But for that slender connection with the mainland making it to a peninsula, Andalıç would have been an ordinary island. As if it had rolled down between the long, flat hills in the background, with the umbilical cord still attached.
The first 55% or so of the novel is something of a domestic drama (at times a melodrama). Cemal finally discovers what happened to his father and, determined to settle down, finally proposes to his childhood friend, who had left the town for University in Izmir and a high-flying career but returned after suffering a breakdown. However, their relationship is impacted by her ongoing mental health struggles.
He also discovers a half-sister, Cemile, who he, a 38 year-old virgin, has to rescue from a boyfriend who had pimped her into a pavyon. The pimp follows them back to Andalıç seeking revenge, and Cemile, despite them being half-siblings, is determined to seduce Cemal.
Another strand follows Jülide, his fiancee’s younger-sister’s best friend, a lycée student, living with her grandmother after the death of her parents. In a magic realist touch, Jülide has minor supernatural powers (e.g. to move objects), and as she starts work experience at the local newspaper, she is dragged into some danger as the newspaper exposes local political scandals, with her traditionalist boyfriend seemingly in the pay of those threatening the press.
The rich imagery of the opening of the novel is rather typical, indeed at times the prose was a little cloying for my jaundiced taste, and this part of the novel culminates in a collective sign at past loves and losses:
Enticed by these words, all those thousands of years of Andalıç's losses flooded the night. Fermented the heat and the dark, dimmed the stars, and forced windows open one by one. Threadbare bedsheets split just where they were thinnest under nightmare-laden tossings and turnings. Hair stuck itchily to sweating necks instead of fanning out on pillows, as troubled dreamers waited with evanescent hope for the elusive voice or the face of a past love. Old muslin headscarves, washed with the tears of grandmas when they recited the Koran on anniversaries, were tucked into children's vests. All those lovingly safeguarded mementos too precious to use radiated the pungent odour of waiting from the cracks in wardrobes. In the stifling heat, weighed down by loss, during blissful or restive sleep full of everything that will remain lost for ever, all of Andalic gave a deep sigh.
But at this point the novel takes a rather different turn after this. That sigh heralded a muffled rumble from the depths of the earth, a heave that would balloon into a colossus as it rose … Andalıç'ın bu derin iç çekişiyle toprağın derinlerinden boğuk bir uğultu, yükseldikçe azmanlaşacak bir hareketi de beraberinde sürükleyerek yukarı doğru kabarmaya başladı. The resulting earthquake actually causes Andalıç to break away from the mainland and float into the Aegean sea.
It is hard not to make the mental comparison to Saramago’s A Jangada de Pedra (The Stone Raft), translated into Turkish as Yitik Adanın Öyküsü in 2006, although I am not aware of any explicit influence, and the story does go in a very different direction.
With the mainland authorities believing the island has sunk beneath the waves, the community is left to fend for itself, and the local authorities, the same ones accused of corruption by Jülide’s newspaper, and support by some of the male youth, impose a bureaucratic regime complete with appropriation of supplies, a census and ration cards. And the human drama takes on a more political dimension as Cemal, Jülide and their acquaintances find themselves on the other side to the increasingly authoritarian regime.
Overall, perhaps a little overwritten for my personal taste, but worthwhile. 3.5 stars.
It was translated into English (at times using a very English, even London, vernacular) by Feyza Howell, who also translated the wonderful The Highly Unreliable Account of the History of a Madhouse, from the Turkish language original İnceldiği Yerden (2008) by Aslı Biçen. Aslı Biçen herself, as well as being a novelist (this was her 2nd novel) is one of Turkey’s most renowned translators from English, covering authors from Dickens, through Faulkner, to Rushdie.
The novel opens:
A lacklustre glow to the right of the road heralded daybreak, rising between a pair of barren hills flung together carelessly like stunted teeth, as if somehow mislaid on the plain. Having traversed the length of the night and consumed not the miles but the hours, the coach was on its triumphant advance towards the final few minutes. The sun cast the morning from the V of the hills onto the fields nearest the road with the impatience of a catapulted stone, faster and brighter as than when setting. A nebulous wave rippled the crisp green knee-high wheat, which resembled an underwater scene in the subdued light.
With even the most resilient of the passengers having succumbed to an exhausted sleep or a groggy headache after countless hours of shuddering, the dream-heavy coach dipped into, and rose back out of, a deep pothole. Cemal who had been asleep for hours with the ease of a seasoned long-distance traveller, banged his head on the rock-hard windowpane. His eyes opened sightlessly.
Yolun sağında, ihmalkârlıkla ovada unutulmuş gibi duran iki kıraç, eğreti tepenin güdük dişleri arasında güneş fersiz bir aydınlıkla gelişini duyurdu. Geceyi baştan sona kat eden otobüs yoldan ziyade saatlerle cebelleşmiş, geriye kalan son dakikaların üzerinde zaferle ilerliyordu. Tepelerin V'sindeki güneş sapan taşı sabırsızlığıyla, her zamanki gibi battığından daha hızlı ve daha parlak, yola yakın tarlalara sabahı düşürdü. Diz boyu buğdayların taze yeşili, ketlenmiş ışıkta, deniz altı düzlüklerine has bir su buğusuyla dalgalanmaya başladı.
Sarsıntılı uzun saatlerin ardından en inatçı yolcusu bile baygın bir uykuya ya da başağrılı bir sersemliğe teslim olmuş otobüs, yoldaki derin çukura, rüya yükünün bütün ağırlığıyla dalıp çıktı. Yılların uzun yolculuk alışkanlığıyla derin bir uykuyu saatlerdir sürdürmeyi başarmış olan Cemal'in savrulan başı taş gibi cama çarptı. Gözleri açıldı ama görmeye değil.
Cemal, a grocer, is returning to his hometown, after another false alarm in his fruitless search for his father, who left home twenty years earlier. That hometown is Andalıç, connected to the Turkish mainland by a one mile isthmus:
But for that slender connection with the mainland making it to a peninsula, Andalıç would have been an ordinary island. As if it had rolled down between the long, flat hills in the background, with the umbilical cord still attached.
The first 55% or so of the novel is something of a domestic drama (at times a melodrama). Cemal finally discovers what happened to his father and, determined to settle down, finally proposes to his childhood friend, who had left the town for University in Izmir and a high-flying career but returned after suffering a breakdown. However, their relationship is impacted by her ongoing mental health struggles.
He also discovers a half-sister, Cemile, who he, a 38 year-old virgin, has to rescue from a boyfriend who had pimped her into a pavyon. The pimp follows them back to Andalıç seeking revenge, and Cemile, despite them being half-siblings, is determined to seduce Cemal.
Another strand follows Jülide, his fiancee’s younger-sister’s best friend, a lycée student, living with her grandmother after the death of her parents. In a magic realist touch, Jülide has minor supernatural powers (e.g. to move objects), and as she starts work experience at the local newspaper, she is dragged into some danger as the newspaper exposes local political scandals, with her traditionalist boyfriend seemingly in the pay of those threatening the press.
The rich imagery of the opening of the novel is rather typical, indeed at times the prose was a little cloying for my jaundiced taste, and this part of the novel culminates in a collective sign at past loves and losses:
Enticed by these words, all those thousands of years of Andalıç's losses flooded the night. Fermented the heat and the dark, dimmed the stars, and forced windows open one by one. Threadbare bedsheets split just where they were thinnest under nightmare-laden tossings and turnings. Hair stuck itchily to sweating necks instead of fanning out on pillows, as troubled dreamers waited with evanescent hope for the elusive voice or the face of a past love. Old muslin headscarves, washed with the tears of grandmas when they recited the Koran on anniversaries, were tucked into children's vests. All those lovingly safeguarded mementos too precious to use radiated the pungent odour of waiting from the cracks in wardrobes. In the stifling heat, weighed down by loss, during blissful or restive sleep full of everything that will remain lost for ever, all of Andalic gave a deep sigh.
But at this point the novel takes a rather different turn after this. That sigh heralded a muffled rumble from the depths of the earth, a heave that would balloon into a colossus as it rose … Andalıç'ın bu derin iç çekişiyle toprağın derinlerinden boğuk bir uğultu, yükseldikçe azmanlaşacak bir hareketi de beraberinde sürükleyerek yukarı doğru kabarmaya başladı. The resulting earthquake actually causes Andalıç to break away from the mainland and float into the Aegean sea.
It is hard not to make the mental comparison to Saramago’s A Jangada de Pedra (The Stone Raft), translated into Turkish as Yitik Adanın Öyküsü in 2006, although I am not aware of any explicit influence, and the story does go in a very different direction.
With the mainland authorities believing the island has sunk beneath the waves, the community is left to fend for itself, and the local authorities, the same ones accused of corruption by Jülide’s newspaper, and support by some of the male youth, impose a bureaucratic regime complete with appropriation of supplies, a census and ration cards. And the human drama takes on a more political dimension as Cemal, Jülide and their acquaintances find themselves on the other side to the increasingly authoritarian regime.
Overall, perhaps a little overwritten for my personal taste, but worthwhile. 3.5 stars.
April 18, 2021
15-16.04.2021
Çevirileri ile gönlümüzü fehteden Aslı Biçen'in ikinci romanı 'İnceldiği Yerden'.
Hayali bir taşrada geçen fantastik öğeleri ile şaşırtan çok tanıdık gelecek bir özgürsüzlük, hapsolma hikayesi.
Kapağından başlayarak çok ince düşünülmüş bir kurgu. Fantastik bir siyasi roman diyebilirdim eğer karantinadan ve ülkemizin aldığı son dönemdeki şekli bilmesem. Ama bence artık son derece mümkün bir anlatım. Çevirmenlerin kaleminin kudret ve kuvvetine çok inanan bir okur olarak tavsiye ediyorum.
Keyifli okumalar 🌼
#readingismycardio #aslihanneokudu #okudumbitti #2021okumalarım #okuryorumu #kitaptavsiyesi #neokudum #metisyayın #metiskitap #aslıbiçen #inceldiğiyerden #çağdaştürkedebiyatı
Çevirileri ile gönlümüzü fehteden Aslı Biçen'in ikinci romanı 'İnceldiği Yerden'.
Hayali bir taşrada geçen fantastik öğeleri ile şaşırtan çok tanıdık gelecek bir özgürsüzlük, hapsolma hikayesi.
Kapağından başlayarak çok ince düşünülmüş bir kurgu. Fantastik bir siyasi roman diyebilirdim eğer karantinadan ve ülkemizin aldığı son dönemdeki şekli bilmesem. Ama bence artık son derece mümkün bir anlatım. Çevirmenlerin kaleminin kudret ve kuvvetine çok inanan bir okur olarak tavsiye ediyorum.
Keyifli okumalar 🌼
#readingismycardio #aslihanneokudu #okudumbitti #2021okumalarım #okuryorumu #kitaptavsiyesi #neokudum #metisyayın #metiskitap #aslıbiçen #inceldiğiyerden #çağdaştürkedebiyatı
May 9, 2021
Snapping Point is beautiful and strange - the sort of novel that immediately draws me in.
The novel opens as our hero, Cemal, is slipping in and out of restless sleep, banging his head on the window of a juddering bus, dreaming of dolphins swimming in wheatfields as he returns from a fruitless search for his father, who walked out of the family home twenty years ago. Cemal is returning home to Andalıç, a village connected by a narrow causeway to the coast of Turkey, where he soon becomes engaged to his long-time love, Saliha.
Midway through this novel, Cemal's and Saliha's wedding preparations - and their cautious, nervous lovemaking - are interrupted by an earthquake that severs Andalıç from the mainland, setting it adrift in the Aegean Sea, where it seems to be hidden from ships and helicopters and all contact with the outside world. As the villagers slowly eat their remaining stores of food, the dictatorial Mayor, who rules the island from the "Care Home" (a towering, glowering edifice at the highest point on the now-island) issues a series of increasingly tyrannical orders, rounding up school-boys to serve in a militia and guarding precious stores of food from the hungry populace.
Snapping Point appears to be an allegory of dictatorship and press censorship, and it is - but it's also an entrancingly magical tale, involving the young Jülide, who discovers that she can use her own thoughts to thwart the evil schemes of others, including those of her controlling, violent ex-boyfriend Erkan. Together with a small band of friends, Jülide and Cemal fight the creeping authoritarianism of the Mayor and his cronies.
Aslı Biçen's writing (translated from Turkish to English by Feyza Howell) is lovely. Here's her description of the earthquake that sets Andalıç in motion:
"That sigh heralded a muffled rumble from the depths of the earth, a heave that would balloon into a colossus as it rose. Birds were the first creatures to run away from this surge that presaged an eerie future, flocking, screaming, oblivious to the darkness....Terror and anguish, which had seeped into the ground and pooled there for a century, rattled the ordinary, intent on extracting it. The faces of the dead sought resurrection as the glass over their framed portraits hanging on the walls shivered with a thin fever. . . Water shivered too, in concentric rings in glasses on bedside tables, in pitchers on tables, in buckets in bathrooms, and sleeping on the shores of Andalıç."
Snapping Point is both realistic and fantastic, and I highly recommend it.
The novel opens as our hero, Cemal, is slipping in and out of restless sleep, banging his head on the window of a juddering bus, dreaming of dolphins swimming in wheatfields as he returns from a fruitless search for his father, who walked out of the family home twenty years ago. Cemal is returning home to Andalıç, a village connected by a narrow causeway to the coast of Turkey, where he soon becomes engaged to his long-time love, Saliha.
Midway through this novel, Cemal's and Saliha's wedding preparations - and their cautious, nervous lovemaking - are interrupted by an earthquake that severs Andalıç from the mainland, setting it adrift in the Aegean Sea, where it seems to be hidden from ships and helicopters and all contact with the outside world. As the villagers slowly eat their remaining stores of food, the dictatorial Mayor, who rules the island from the "Care Home" (a towering, glowering edifice at the highest point on the now-island) issues a series of increasingly tyrannical orders, rounding up school-boys to serve in a militia and guarding precious stores of food from the hungry populace.
Snapping Point appears to be an allegory of dictatorship and press censorship, and it is - but it's also an entrancingly magical tale, involving the young Jülide, who discovers that she can use her own thoughts to thwart the evil schemes of others, including those of her controlling, violent ex-boyfriend Erkan. Together with a small band of friends, Jülide and Cemal fight the creeping authoritarianism of the Mayor and his cronies.
Aslı Biçen's writing (translated from Turkish to English by Feyza Howell) is lovely. Here's her description of the earthquake that sets Andalıç in motion:
"That sigh heralded a muffled rumble from the depths of the earth, a heave that would balloon into a colossus as it rose. Birds were the first creatures to run away from this surge that presaged an eerie future, flocking, screaming, oblivious to the darkness....Terror and anguish, which had seeped into the ground and pooled there for a century, rattled the ordinary, intent on extracting it. The faces of the dead sought resurrection as the glass over their framed portraits hanging on the walls shivered with a thin fever. . . Water shivered too, in concentric rings in glasses on bedside tables, in pitchers on tables, in buckets in bathrooms, and sleeping on the shores of Andalıç."
Snapping Point is both realistic and fantastic, and I highly recommend it.
June 3, 2020
"Yazar, kendini ister istemez 'TR distopyasının' içine sıkıştırdığı kahramanlarıyla özdeşleştirdiğinden olsa gerek, onları çok acele bir kurtuluşa vardırmaya çalışıyor, bir tür 'hızlandırılmış Türkiye simülasyonu'na sokarak. Oysa kurtuluş o kadar kolay değil, çizgisel değil bir kere..."
https://okumadansonra.blogspot.com/20...
https://okumadansonra.blogspot.com/20...
July 12, 2020
Canım Nurbahar ile İnceldiği Yerden üzerine konuştuğumuz yeni podcast bölümü: perekati-pole
July 14, 2021
Benim için şu ana kadar 2021 yılının en iyi okuması desem abartmış olur muyum? Kesinlikle olmam:) Bol tasvirli anlatımlar başlarda -sevdiğim bir tarz olmadığı için- beni yorsa da devam etmekte direndim ve karşılığını gani gani aldım. Karakterler ayrı güzel, hikaye ayrı güzel… Pek yapmadığım bir şeyi de yaptım, bazı cümlelerin altını çizmek gibi. Bu kitapla karşılaşırsanız hiç tereddüt etmeden alınız okuyunuz.
July 17, 2025
zevkle okudum ama sonunda bağlandığı yerler bana, bilmiyorum, kolay geldi sanırım. ya da eleştiri tasvir edilen krize denk düşmedi. ama betimlemeler gerçekten harikaydı, bazen olay örgüsü cümle uğraşına arka plan gibi kaldı, bundan asla şikayetçi değilim. aslı biçen şiir yazar mısınız? "Jülide ağlamaklı bir ifadeyle gözlerini kaldırdığında Rahmi'nin gözlerindene gündelik olanın çekildiğini, olağanüstü bir ışıltının hep kapalı duran bir kapıyı açarak dışarı boşaldığını, her zamankinin tıpatıp aynı olan duruşunun, gazeteyi tutuşunun, başını kaldırışının üzerine ipince bir tül serildiğini ve onu başka biri yaptığını gördü."
"Evden ilk çıktığında komşunun mutfağından süzülen zeytinyağlı iç bakla kokusuna bıraktığı burnu, küçük bir tahta yığınının yanında alt alta üst üste oynayan sarman yavrulara bıraktığı gözleri, hemen şu indiği yokuşun tepesindeki açık pencereden üzerine atılan bebek çığlığına bıraktığı kulakları, farklı mesafeleri aynı anda kat ederek duraladığı yere üşüştüler."
"Evden ilk çıktığında komşunun mutfağından süzülen zeytinyağlı iç bakla kokusuna bıraktığı burnu, küçük bir tahta yığınının yanında alt alta üst üste oynayan sarman yavrulara bıraktığı gözleri, hemen şu indiği yokuşun tepesindeki açık pencereden üzerine atılan bebek çığlığına bıraktığı kulakları, farklı mesafeleri aynı anda kat ederek duraladığı yere üşüştüler."
June 11, 2021
A translation is not another edition of the original.... They're not the same book, Goodreads.
August 19, 2023
Müthiş bir dil, nefisdi.
May 19, 2022
Kitabın dili gerçekten güzel. Cümleler aksın gitsin, tasvirler uzasın istiyorsunuz. Ama taşrada hayat, evlenmemiş eğitimli kadına sosyal baskı, ayı sevgilisini bırakamayan genç kız, pavyondan kadın kaçırma gibi sık kullanımdan eprimiş meselelerin eserin merkezine oturtulması canımı sıktı. Bir toplumsal yaranın bahsi kapanmadan diğeri açılıyor ve kitap bir sosyal sorunlar kolajına dönüşüyor adeta. Yazarın dili çok güzel olsa da okurla yazının arasından çekilmiyor ki bu bildiğimiz meselelerin nasıl anlatıldığına şaşıralım. Yine de okutuyor kendini bir şekilde. Bırakmadan bitirdiğime bakarsak.
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