Dschinns / Djinns
Fatma Aydemir
Hanser Verlag, February 2022
Hüseyin has spent the past thirty years working in Germany, and now his biggest dream has finally come true: He has bought his very own flat in Istanbul— but he promptly dies of a heart attack the day he moves in. His family in Germany travel to Turkey for the funeral. Fatma Aydemir’s epic social novel tells the stories of six characters who could not be more different from each other, and yet all happen to be related, as well as of their insatiable desire to be understood. If every family is nothing more than a tapestry of stories, what do the holes in the fabric mean? Do we need them because we can’t face the whole truth? Or will they bring everything crashing down? Djinns asks these questions with power and beauty, casting its gaze deep into the history of the past decades and far ahead into the future. The six unforgettable protagonists of this novel all have their own baggage: secrets, desires, wounds. And yet one thing unites them all: The feeling they get in Hüseyin’s flat that someone is watching them.
This book was also selected by our jury, read our recommendation of Dschinns here.
Read an English-language sample translation by Jon Cho-Polizzi here.
This book was shortlisted for the German Book Prize 2022. As the media partner for the Prize, we publish information on all six shortlisted books.
