Lojman

WINNER of the Republic of Consciousness Prize! Abandoned by her husband, marooned by an epic snowstorm, a mother gives birth to her third child. Her sense of entrapment turns into a desperate rage in this unblinking portrait of a woman whose powerlessness becomes lethal. Lojman tells, on its surface, the domestic tale of a Kurdish family living in a small village on a desolate plateau at the foot of the snow-capped mountains of Turkeys Van province. Virtually every aspect of the familys life is dictated by the government, from their exile to the countrys remote, easternmost region to their sequestration in the grim "teachers lodging"or lojmanto which theyre assigned. When Selmas husband walks out one day, he leaves in his wake a storm of resentment between his young children and a mother reluctant to parent them. Written in startling, raw prose, this novelthe authors first to be translated into Englishis reminiscent of Elena Ferrantes masterful Days of Abandonment, though its private dramas are made all the more vivid against an imposing natural landscape that exerts a powerful, life-threatening force. In short, propulsive chapters, Lojman spins a domestic drama crystallized through the familys mental and physical claustrophobia. Vivid daydreams morph with cold realities, and as the familys descent reaches its nadir, their world is transformed into a surreal, gelatinous prison from which there is no escape.