SURGEON

2024: 'Surgeon' is a novel made up of knots in which one knot is unraveled while another appears, a novel that “surprises” us what we are not surprised by anything... This time, Tayfun Pirselimoğlu tells the story of Tarik Kara, a surgeon who performs face transformation surgeries on behalf of the state, in a strange Istanbul night, in which the dark faces of the deep state wander. The story is even joined by a monkey and a tiger!

LAND SURVEYOR

2021: Tayfun Pirselimoğlu tells the story of Cemal Kara, who is dragged in front of a strange wind - or destiny?

OTHER SIDE OF THE DESERT

2018: “…I was almost on the verge of deciding that it would be best to go back, if my eyes hadn't stumbled upon a distant point during my walks… Suddenly, far, far away, I seemed to see something 'something' behind that layer of incense. What I saw was a castle on a hill…”

THE BARBER

2016: I shot the provincial head of the National Progress and Reputation Party as he was leaving his mistress's house and getting into his car late at night. It was very cold, it was frosty; so the streets were completely deserted. I stood and waited, steaming out of my mouth, in the corner across from the old-faced, btb-covered apartment building. Even my gloved hands in my coat pocket were freezing. He went out at half past two. He was a large man, his heavy body struggling to balance as he walked towards his car, which he had parked in a back alley so that he would not be seen in front of the apartment. Maybe it was the effect of his sign night, I don't know.

KERR

2014: On the one hand, a country and people groaning and suffering under bombardments, massacres, murders, tortures, disappearances, unsolved perpetrators… On the other hand, a man who witnessed all this and fell into a deep sleep as events accelerated and developed! Contrary to popular belief, the issue is not to say that we are all guilty easily, and it is not so; the issue is to first understand how we testify and then with which individual political, philosophical, economic and moral motives we become partners with the murderer… Because this is not history that repeats itself, but this (form)!

THE NEWEST LIVES OF HARRY LIME OR PRAISE TO THE THIRD MAN

2012: Kurtz first appeared in Joseph Conrad's famous novel Heart of Darkness, then appeared in Orson Welles' (or Graham Greene's) The Third Man. As you know, Conrad's is the work that commemorates the "horror" of colonialism. According to one interpretation, Kurtz represents the unreasonable, impossible desires, asymmetrical demands of the unconscious in Heart of Darkness. It is in relation to/with the other in an inverted value system. Even though the result is "horror", there is room for the other/other in this work, there is still an outside, another/other in the Heart of Darkness. For the body of the subaltern is what mediates the colonial master's relation to himself; His body tortured, exploited, destroyed…

MİTHRA AND QUAILLAR BOZTEPE

2011: Everyone sees a city's path, history, geography, sea, social life, changes, types of people, atmosphere, natural beauties, forgotten values, food and beverage culture, night and day, summer and winter, folklore, entertainment life, and a thousand other features in their own way. A historian, a geographer, a tourist, a soldier, a teacher, sees from a different perspective and wants to write from his own point of view.

ROOMS OF THE HOTELS

2009: Tales from the Desert, Album of the Lost Persons, Melancholia and the Towers of the City… The chaoticity, magnificence, misery, ordinariness, wealth, monotony, randomness, irrationality and vulgarity of life and human beings, I think, have been rarely described in our literature in such a sharp and artistic way. Few writers had the courage to confront their age and their contemporaries, and crowned this difficult effort with works large enough to withstand time: Tayfun Pirselimoğlu is one of these writers.

ALBUM OF THE MISSING PERSONS

2005: Printing worker Cezmi Kara is caught in a strange vortex when he chases after the faces in the Album of the Missing Persons, which he found in a secluded corner of her workplace. He is unaware of how dangerous and deadly the monster called Curiosity is, as he lives in this messy country and is unaware of anything. It is curious that Cezmi Kara, from Ferit Curacı, who is a singer in wedding halls, to Nihat Sadık, who jumped on a train whose destination is unknown on the day when the sum of the coincidences in his life came together; From Feridun Hallac, who has been burning inside since the age of eight and disappeared at the age of sixty-eight with the desire to go far, to müezzin Rıfat Sezgin, who could not stand the pain of his forbidden love any longer; It drags him into dark corridors after a series of painful images from Kamuran Özgün, who luckily escaped a police bullet while he was a member of the organization and never came back, and -perhaps the most exciting-- to Meryem, full of mystery that appeared and disappeared.

DESERT TALES

2005: When I opened the door that I discovered by chance in the basement of our mansion when I was a child, years later, these were the things that desert hiding: women who committed suicide with grace, victims who seemed ordinary but were armed with striking secrets, combative knights, restless circus acrobats, executioners whose souls and bodies changed, strange people sentenced to a marble city, guides who accumulate destinies, cursed long-distance captains, wandering storytellers who extract living bodies from their stories... But most importantly, the heroes of the journey to the library at the other end of the desert: the grumpy old writer in love with Raskolnikov, the dog Marlowe, the hero of the strangest stories, his past is adorned with the most attractive souls. little Abdullah... and me, who for some reason has made it my duty to convey these magical lines "there is no room for humility"...

TOWERS OF THE CITY

2005: We are in the future, in Istanbul, where martial law prevails...

MELANCHOLIA

2003: Haşmet, a young barber's apprentice, whose face has not yet been touched by a razor, sees “It” in a dream one night and immediately falls into a deep love; He then sets off on a long journey to Baghdad. People who come across during this magical journey, whose lives are filled with strange loves, tell Haşmet their own stories and warn him. However, Haşmet's heart has already been caught in the whirlpool of his irrational love, and his soul has already caught fire. Neither the words of the poor conductor, nor the terrifying fate of the wire acrobat Yakup, nor the terrible story of the mirror man, nor the warnings of the captain of the ship of the insane, nor the warnings of his regular passenger turn Haşmet from his path.

“STREET” MAGAZINE

1988

ISTANBUL 2099

2019: William Gibson described Istanbul as the city that always remained the same in his science fiction novel Neuromancer, which he wrote in the eighties. In the quarter century since that book, the city has changed at a dizzying pace. So where do we imagine this change, which displaces stone, soil, water and life, will lead us? This ancient city was here with its stories and narrators two thousand years ago, and it will be so at the close of the 21st century, but in what way? Istanbul 2099 contains sixteen striking visions of Istanbul at the end of the 21st century from the pens of sixteen authors. Sixteen new Istanbuls that are socially, architecturally, technologically, and sometimes geographically different. It is as far away as a lifetime, but as familiar and close as all the Istanbuls of yesterday and today. Welcome to the “brave new world” of future Istanbuls…

SURGEON

LAND SURVEYOR

OTHER SIDE OF THE DESERT

THE BARBER

KERR

THE NEWEST LIVES OF HARRY LIME OR PRAISE TO THE THIRD MAN

MİTHRA AND QUAILLAR BOZTEPE

ROOMS OF THE HOTELS

ALBUM OF THE MISSING PERSONS

DESERT TALES

TOWERS OF THE CITY

MELANCHOLIA

“STREET” MAGAZINE

ISTANBUL 2099

Menu

Contact