Lady Life

Contents Cover Also by Ahmet Altan Title Page Copyright Contents 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 About the Author and Translator Landmarks Cover Cover Title Page Table of Contents Start Copyright Print Page List i ii iii iv v vi vii viii 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 
 
 
 
 PRAISE FORI WILL NEVER SEE THE WORLD AGAIN
 “Urgent…brilliant…a timeless testament to the art and power of writing amid Orwellian repression.”
 —Washington Post
 “Remarkable…Altan’s talent as a writer allowed him to communicate his experience in rich, haunting detail…Despite the oppressive, cruel darkness at the core of Altan’s memoir, his words shine like bioluminescent creatures patrolling the abyss…brilliant.”
 —NPR
 “The title of Mr. Altan’s book is the statement of a brutal fact, rather than a cry of despair. There is not a smidgen of self-pity in the memoir’s 212 pages. What emerges is this: You cannot jail my mind, and you cannot shut me up.”
 —New York Times
 “[I Will Never See the World Again] speaks for itself with such clarity, certainty, and wisdom that only one thing needs to be said: read it. And then read it again…a radiant celebration of the inner resources of human beings…Its account of the creative process is sublime, among the most perfectly expressed analyses of that perpetually elusive phenomenon. And it is a triumph of the spirit.”
 —The Guardian
 “An inspiring testament to the human spirit. Through solitary days and aching bones, Altan shows us that dreams can escape the confines of a concrete cell and spread without limits.”
 —Newsweek
 “I hope that everyone who can read, whatever their politics, reads Ahmet Altan’s response to his imprisonment. Repressive regimes hope that if they lock up writers they are also locking up ideas. This will always fail.”
 —Neil Gaiman
 “From the bowels of Erdoğan’s prison system emerge these meditations on the vicissitudes of justice, products of a richly stocked mind, engrossing, sometimes profound, and remarkable for their equanimity.”
 —J. M. Coetzee
 “Remember the name Ahmet Altan! Add him to the great voices writing from prison across the centuries—Boethius, Cervantes, Gramsci, Soyinka, Solzhenitsyn—and be moved to tears and indignation by his story.”
 —Ariel Dorfman
 
 
 ALSO BY AHMET ALTAN
 Fiction
 Endgame
 Like a Sword Wound
 Love in the Days of Rebellion
 Dying Is Easier Than Loving
 Nonfiction
 I Will Never See the World Again
 
 
 
 
 
 
 First published in Turkish in 2021 
 Contents
 
 Cover
 Also by Ahmet