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Kurdish leader Selahattin Demirtaş and Turkish writer Yiğit Bener pen a crime novel in a unique literary collaboration across prison bars, igniting conversations on reconciliation in polarized Turkey.
In an extraordinary literary collaboration, a jailed Kurdish leader, Selahattin Demirtaş, and a Turkish writer, Yiğit Bener, have turned their pen-pal exchanges into one of Turkey’s bestsellers. The crime novel Duet in Purgatory, featuring a retired left-wing lawyer and a bitter aging general with a tortuous past, has captured the hearts of readers across the nation.
The story, developed without the authors ever discussing the plot, spans the last 40 years of Turkey’s tumultuous history and the long-standing Kurdish conflict. Selahattin Demirtaş, the Kurdish leader serving a 42-year sentence, described the process as “a risky gamble,” akin to playing chess move by move without agreeing on the plot, characters, or style.
The novel’s inception began when author and translator Yiğit Bener sent Demirtaş a copy of Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s classic Journey to the End of the Night along with a note expressing his solidarity. The 51-year-old Demirtaş, a former co-president of the third-largest political party in Turkey, has been in prison since 2016, despite calls for his release from the European Court of Human Rights.
Photo Credit: Yasin Akgul / AFP
Bener, moved by the injustice of Demirtaş’s incarceration, proposed the idea of writing a novel together. The project, initially meant to keep Demirtaş busy, quickly evolved as the two wrapped up 13 chapters. Despite the lack of an initial plot or characters, their correspondence flourished into a captivating narrative.
Demirtaş’s publishing house, Dipnot, released 55,000 copies of the novel last month, with more scheduled for September. The book’s success lies in its timely relevance, posing questions of reconciliation through its protagonists, two characters from the same generation who share a feeling of defeat.
The novel’s spirited narrative has received high praise from critics, and readers are flocking to see Bener, the free half of the writing duo, during his bookshop tours. The collaboration culminated in an emotional meeting between Bener and Demirtaş in Edirne prison on the book’s release day, marking a poignant moment in this unique literary journey.
With AFP
