A Light Still Burns

'There are three ways to face life: put up with it, fight or flee.' After eight years in Turkey, Gül leaves her native Anatolia and returns to Germany. Reunited with her husband Fuat, she observes life there from the margins. As age gives her ever deeper insight, she sees society change rapidly, and yet her ability to connect to the people around her remains constant.

Gül's life is shaped by the melancholy of separation, but with her warm-hearted and accepting outlook she has learned to endure homesickness and longing. Full of emotions and poetry but told without sentimentality, Selim Özdoğan's account of Gül's journey is a tender and moving novel about home, cultural identity and a life between two worlds.

Selim Özdoğan was born in Germany in 1971 and has been publishing his prose since 1995. His work has won him numerous prizes and grants. Aside from writing, he is a very experienced yoga practitioner and an inveterate literary performer. He has published several short story collections and twelve novels, including The Blacksmith's Daughter (2021) and 52 Factory Lane (2022) with V&Q Books.