“The Stone Building “ published by Potamos
How do you narrate a nightmare? How do you turn hell into literature? How do you turn pain into a song? In her best book so far, Aslı Erdoğan describes the unspeakable, removing its horror without lightening its existential weight. In this rare poetic text, moving between dream and reality, between shadow and light, one woman struggles with her memories from the time when she was incarcerated in the Stone House. In this prison, where political prisoners and intellectuals who defied censorship live together with young children, street pickpockets, who share the same mental and physical pain, a woman seeks her voice, in the way that a writer seeks her words, finally finding an attendant to her sad song in an angel and an old man who, upon dying, bequeathedher his eyes. The wonderful thing about this book lies not in the description of the horrendous living conditions and the horrors of Turkish prisons which we sense behind the veil of the narrator’s dreamlike memories, but in the unexpected tenderness exuded by a song about human atrocity.
Press release by the publisher
“The Stone Building“, receiver of the prestigious Sait Faik Award and a finalist in PEN International has so far been translated into eleven languages.
French (Actes Sud) in November 2012
Swedish (Ramus, 2013)
Norwegian (Gyldendal) in November 2012
Portuegese (Clube de Autor) in February 2017
English (The City Lights) in February 2018
German (Penguin-Germany) in March 2019
Kurdish(Aryen) in August 2020
Spanish (Armenia) in March 2021
Greek(Potamos) in October 2021
Bhasa Indonesian (February 2022)
(Danish translation about to be published)
(Translation into Kurdish Sorani has been proceeding)
Aslı Erdoğan 