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 Turkey's Van province. Virtually every aspect
of the family's life is dictated by the government, from their exile to
the country's remote, easternmost region to their sequestration in the
grim "teacher's lodging"--or lojman--to which they're assigned. When
Selma's 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 novel -- the author's first to be
translated into English -- is reminiscent of Elena Ferrante's 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 family's mental and physical claustrophobia.
Vivid daydreams morph with cold realities, and as the family's descent
reaches its nadir, their world is transformed into a surreal, gelatinous
prison from which there is no escape.
