Night : a novel

by Bilge Karasu

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Both a political novel of deep sophistication and a dazzling meditation on the craft and meaning of fiction, Night explores the redemptive powers of the imagination as it shows us the mind of a world-class novelist at work. Night begins as a writer's notebook. It appears the narrative of a decent man, a writer of liberal sensibility who lives in a truly hellish place, where "nightworkers" prowl the streets, savagely murdering victims at random and leaving cryptic inscriptions about the show more advent of some apocalyptic "big night." It is a world of ritual mass-murder, of unrelenting paranoia and terror for its own sake, a world rife with rumor and deception. The writer tells of being blackmailed through a supremely cynical political maneuver into attending a foreign conference as a showpiece delegate. The journey he relates begins in deceit and ends in disaster. Set alongside the writer's story is the story of the creation of the book itself. In asides and footnotes, the writer decides on one narrative strategy, second-guesses it, then tries another, as he works his way toward an ending he cannot quite imagine. The author presents the book-in-progress through the voices of four curiously complementary characters: the writer; his nemesis, a onetime school companion who has become an administrator in both the government and a paragovernmental organization; and two agents under the administrator's direction, a man named Sevinc and a woman named Sevim. Sevinc and the original narrator become lovers who keep being reunited, and Sevim, another former schoolmate and for a time the administrator's wife, finds herself in a struggle between strategy and conscience that ends in her murder. Ultimately the identities of the voices in Night fracture and blend, the footnotes seem to take on a life of their own, and the parallel narratives fuse in a nightmarish climax that is utterly unforgettable. Night is political in the most profound sense, in its exploration of the human condition and our own culpability in oppression, whenever and wherever it occurs. Spare and shocking, by turns lyrical and grotesque, this metafictional anatomy of the modern soul invites comparison with Orwell's 1984, Kafka's The Trial, and Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being. show less

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2 reviews
Gece'de anlatılan tek tek, bölük pörçük durumların, konumların, gerçek yaşamla somut ilişkisi sürekli seziliyor satır aralarında. Okurun yakın geçmişte tanığı olduğu birçok toplumsal, tarihsel, kültürel deneyden yankılar var metinde sözgelişi. Alışılmış tarihsel mantığın işleyişi bile sorguya çekiliyor. Ama bütün bu gerçek durumlardan soyut bir çıkarım olan yaşantı, insan umutlarıyla korkularının bütünleyici imgeleriyle dile getiriliyor.
I read Night in English, and perhaps I should read it in Turkish, too. Even in the English, the language of the book is certainly beautiful, arresting, and sometimes eerie. With that said, I did not "get it," I am afraid. I got that most of it was one big collection of symbols and all those other literary terms one can use... But what did it all mean in the end, I am not sure. It was a book I finished and said, "Yeah, I guess I should read it again. I have no idea what happened." It is exactly the opposite of what can happen with some books you read and you cannot describe them or what happened in plain words to someone else, but you somehow *understand* what happened. So, yeah, I'll have to read it again, maybe in Turkish this time.

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17+ Works 367 Members

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Common Knowledge

Canonical title
Night : a novel
Original title
Gece
Original publication date
1984 (original Turkish) (original Turkish); 1994 (English translation) (English translation)
Original language
Turkish

Classifications

Genres
Fiction and Literature, General Fiction, Suspense & Thriller
DDC/MDS
894.3533Literature & rhetoricLiteratures of other languagesLiteratures of Altaic, Uralic, Hyperborean, Dravidian languages; literatures of miscellaneous languages of south AsiaTurkic languagesTurkishTurkish fiction1850–2000
LCC
PL248 .K33 .G4313Language and LiteratureLanguages and literatures of Eastern Asia, Africa, OceaniaLanguages of Eastern Asia, Africa, OceaniaTurkic languages

Statistics

Members
79
Popularity
399,627
Reviews
2
Rating
½ (3.25)
Languages
English, Turkish
Media
Paper
ISBNs
3
ASINs
1