All Dogs Die — Cemile Sahin

How do you live with violence and dread? How do you cope with the threat of them recurring? These are among the urgent questions posed by Cemile Sahin's second novel, and the first to be translated into English, ALL DOGS DIE — a haunting and brilliant tale of people on the edge.

ALL DOGS DIE is narrated in nine episodes by different characters who all live exiled in the same high rise building in Western Turkey. Each character lives with the memory and fear of the violence and torture inflicted upon them by the Turkish secret police and army. While they report on their lives, the systematic terror of the Turkish military remains inescapable and persistently enthrals them, one way of another.

Each episode tells of a harrowing past and an indeterminate present and Ayça Türkoğlu's vivid and superb translation serves to bear witness to the heartbreaking and desperate narratives of each character, as they try to put into words their ineffably brutal struggle.

ALL DOGS DIE chronicles a country characterised by militarism and nationalism and stands as an unflinching representation of both geopolitical realities and of the enduring suffering of the Kurdish people wrought by Turkish state-sponsored terror that extends far beyond any one time or place.