The book
In this atmospheric and enigmatic literary noir, an unnamed writer visits a small town and finds himself involved in a mystery with existentialist implications.
A womanizing writer who has lived his entire life in the city retires to a sunbaked Turkish village. Instead of the quiet life he hoped for, he encounters a world of suspicion, paranoia, and violence. The town's mayor is both his only real ally and his greatest nemesis; his lover shares an ambiguous past with the mayor; the town seems hell-bent on turning him into a murderer; and, he is initiated into the town's biggest secret only to discover this knowledge will become a weapon used against him.
The protagonist of this bestselling existential page-turner is an appealingly untrustworthy narrator whose story transports the reader into a world of lust, ambition, small-town politics, and death. A detective story turned on its head, Endgame is compellingly infused with a dreamlike logic reminiscent of Paul Auster and Graham Greene.
The author
Ahmet Altan
Ahmet Altan, one of today’s most important Turkish writers and journalists, was arrested in September 2016 and is serving a life sentence on false charges. An advocate for Kurdish and Armenian minorities and a strong voice of dissent in his country, his arrest and conviction received widespread international criticism (51 Nobel laureates signed an open letter to Turkey’s president calling for Altan’s release). Altan is the author of ten novels—all bestsellers in Turkey—and seven books of essays. In 2009 he received the Freedom and Future of the Media Prize from the Media Foundation of Sparkasse Leipzig, and in 2011 he was awarded the International Hrant Dink Award. The international bestseller Endgame was his English-language debut, and was named one of the fifty notable works of fiction of 2017 by The Washington Post. Like a Sword Wound is the winner of the prestigious Yunus Nadi Novel Prize in Turkey.
Press
- Nov 28 2017
Endgame
— Rain Taxi - May 29 2017
Briefly Noted
— The New Yorker - Apr 28 2017
‘Endgame’—a Turkish seaside noir by Ahmet Altan
— The Washington Post - Apr 1 2017
“Stylish, inventive, and deliciously dark...”
— Library Journal (Starred Review) - Feb 20 2017
A story difficult to forget
— Publishers Weekly - Feb 6 2017
“A gripping existential thriller in the vein of Vikram Chandra’s ‘Sacred Games’ (2006).”
— Kirkus Reviews