WINNER OF THE 2023 NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE TRANSLATION PRIZE
“A profoundly moving account of desperation, exhilaration, and endurance.”—
Kirkus Reviews
The Bell Jar
meets
Good Morning, Midnight
, by one of Turkey’s most beloved writers.
The narrator of Tezer Özlü’s novel is between lovers. She is in and out of psychiatric wards, where she is forced to undergo electroshock treatments. She is between Berlin and Paris. She returns to Istanbul, in search of freedom, happiness, and new love.
Set across the rambling orchards of a childhood in the Turkish provinces and the smoke—filled cafes of European capitals,
Cold Nights of Childhood
offers a sensual, unflinching portrayal of a woman’s sexual encounters and psychological struggle, staging a clash between unbridled feminine desire and repressive, patriarchal society.Originally published in 1980, six years before her death at 43,
cemented Tezer Özlü’s status as one of Turkey’s most beloved writers. A classic that deserves to stand alongside
and Jean Rhys's
,
is a powerfully vivid, disorienting, and bittersweet novel about the determined embrace of life in all its complexity and confusion, translated into English here for the first time by Maureen Freely, with an introduction by Aysegül Savas.