Cemile Sahin spoke to New Books in German at the launch of the English-language edition of her novel, All Dogs Die, (translated by Ayça Türkoğlu, MTO Press, 2024), in London in January 2025.

Sheridan Marshall: All Dogs Die is an unforgettable read. The acts of horrific violence and recurring scenes of torture are seared onto my brain. Please can you tell us about how you came to write the novel?

My work often explores themes of technology, state power, how history is written, and the impact that political and historical decisions have on people’s lives years later.

Cemile Sahin: I should clarify that I am primarily an artist and filmmaker, coming from a visual arts background. I see the literature I write as an extension of this artistic practice. My work often explores themes of technology, state power, how history is written, and the impact that political and historical decisions have on people’s lives years later.

This book is particularly important to me because I have wanted to write about violence for a very long time—not by altering or distorting it, but by capturing it as it is. I wanted to create something that reflects an ongoing reality and addresses a major political issue in Turkey: the oppression of the Kurdish people. At one point, I debated whether to approach this subject through film or literature, but ultimately, I felt that a book would be more effective at that point artistically. When watching a film about violence, the viewer always has the option to turn it off or change the channel, making the discomfort disappear. But when you write about it—when you put it into words and create an image in the reader’s mind—the impact lingers.

SM: I agree, if I were to watch this on a screen, I would look away all the time, but because I am reading it, I am forced to keep reading.

CS: Yes, and your own imagination adds to what you read, shaping the words into something even more vivid. When people encounter a description of violence, their minds often transform it into something beyond the text—an image that lingers and cannot simply be pushed aside.

In all my artistic work, I aim to engage with life itself. I don’t want to create something that exists only within the confines of a studio, detached from the real world. Instead, I want to work with reality—even when that reality is harsh and hurtful, like the violence I describe. None of what I write is fictionalized or invented.

For me personally, the most unresolved conflict in the Middle East is the ongoing war of Turkey against the Kurds. The fact that a free Kurdistan has never materialized, leaving the Kurdish people divided between four countries—Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria—where they continue to face oppression, is a central issue that remains sadly often unaddressed.

SM: The novel does not go into detail about the particulars of the violent regime under which its characters are living. We know the characters are living in an apartment block in Western Turkey. Do you have a sense of exactly when and where the novel is set?

CS: Yes of course. The book is set in the present but recounts the ‘90s, a particularly dark time for Kurds in Northern Kurdistan where they faced oppression, forced assimilation, and violence carried out by the Turkish state and military against the Kurdish population. During this period, the Turkish state systematically imprisoned thousands of political activists, journalists, and intellectuals who spoke out against its policies. Extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances were widespread, with people being abducted from their homes or the streets, never to be seen again. Entire villages in the Kurdish regions were burned down or forcibly evacuated as part of military operations, displacing Millions. Speaking Kurdish in public would lead to arrest, and even peaceful gatherings were met with brutal crackdowns even though the Kurdish people asked for their basic human right: living in freedom.

SM: The way in which you focus on the continuity of torture in your writing is very striking: this sense of the suffering wrought by torture being never-ending because it never stops playing out in the victims’ minds. It’s in your consciousness and you have to carry on living with it for the rest of your life.

CS: In my writing, I focus on how torture and violence don’t just end when the physical act of torture and violence is over—the suffering continues to live on in the minds and bodies of those who experience it. Torture doesn’t have a clear endpoint; it embeds itself in memory, resurfaces in unexpected moments, and becomes something victims have to carry for the rest of their lives.

This is particularly true in the case of political violence, where the perpetrators often remain in power, and justice is rarely served. In Turkey systematic torture is still to this day used as a tool of repression against the Kurdish population. But the effects of that violence don’t fade as if nothing has happened—they shape individuals, families, and entire communities over generations.

I wanted to explore this sense of continuity in my book, not just in terms of personal trauma but more on a collective level. The same cycles of oppression, denial, and violence repeat themselves, and for those who have suffered, there is no real closure—only the struggle to keep living with what they have endured.

SM: The interconnectedness of historical events is something that is signalled throughout All Dogs Die, and also through your other artistic work. How do you cope with writing about so much pain and suffering?

I deeply believe in the power of art and language—not in the simplistic sense that art alone can change the world, but in its ability to leave a mark. It can preserve stories and offer something for future generations to pick up and continue. In that, there is a sense of hope.

CS: It’s incredibly difficult but for me it is also a responsibility— I live in Germany and I have the resources to do it, and because I know so many people who have lost their lives fighting and trying to build a new future. My contribution is the smallest contribution of all.

I deeply believe in the power of art and language—not in the simplistic sense that art alone can change the world, but in its ability to leave a mark. It can preserve stories and offer something for future generations to pick up and continue. In that, there is a sense of hope.

SM: Your technique of describing events from one character’s perspective, and then revisiting the same events from another character’s perspective later in the novel – exposing the discrepancies in their stories – is a very effective way of demonstrating the disorienting effects of state-sponsored violence and the fallibility of the characters’ accounts of what they have experienced. Did you plan to structure the novel in this way?

CS: I consider myself a conceptual writer. I structure my novels like a film—it’s the only way I can write in a way that feels right to me. I spend years thinking about a story before I even put a single sentence on paper. During that time, I map everything out in my mind, scene by scene, as if I were directing a film. Only when the narrative fully takes shape in my head, when every element falls into place, do I begin writing.

SM: I think that shows in the way All Dogs Die is written – particularly in the way the novel circles back to Necla’s story in the end. There are so many fractured parent-child relationships in All Dogs Die, that I found particularly distressing to read about. There are bereaved mothers and fathers who are struggling to come to terms with their loss, often haunted by the manner in which their children died. Yet they remain determined to tell their stories, repeatedly urging the putative listener to ‘write that down’. Do you have a character in the novel you feel a particular affinity with, and if so, why?

CS: I think all of them. It’s impossible to narrow it down to one person – every story has its own horror. A lot of people think that the book is really dark – and I also think it’s dark, of course – but, for me, it still has some sort of hope in it too. Wherever there is hope, life endures.

SM: Yes, even when those family bonds are ripped apart, you still demonstrate their intrinsic importance as a source of consolation that everybody clings to. Necla feels even more of a mother when she loses her children – her sense of herself as a mother is even stronger without her children than it was when they were with her. That is incredibly powerful.

How does it feel to see your novel published in English? What was your involvement with the translation process?

I feel both humbled and overjoyed to see my book come to life in English.

CS: I’m absolutely thrilled—still in shock, really! I want to express my deepest gratitude to my translator, Ayça Türkoğlu, who has done an incredible job. Translation is such a delicate and intricate art, requiring immense precision and sensitivity. It’s a skill not everyone possesses, and I certainly don’t. That’s why I feel both humbled and overjoyed to see my book come to life in English.

SM: Has All Dogs Die been translated into any other languages?

CS: Not yet. I hope more will come.

SM: I am interested in the image that is used repeatedly throughout the English text of All Dogs Die in between the different episodes. It shows a multistorey car park, viewed from above, where nearly all the spaces are occupied by cars. There are just two empty spaces, and there are small mounds of residual snow visible around some of the spaces. I found it an intriguing picture and I scrutinized it every time it appeared, trying to detect whether there had been any minute changes, e.g. in the arrangement of cars parked there. What is its significance in relation to the composition of the book?

CS: I wanted to capture the sense of entrapment the characters experience within the high-rise building in Western Turkey—far from Kurdistan, far from home, the monotony of daily life, staring out of the window at a world that never changes. It’s a feeling of being stuck in a living hell, where escape seems impossible. In response to Jean-Paul Sartre’s famous line, ‘Hell is other people,‘ Ludwig Wittgenstein once wrote, ‘Hell isn’t other people. Hell is yourself.’

But in this case, hell isn’t the self—it is the others. And in this context, the others are the Turkish state.

SM: How does All Dogs Die fit into your creative oeuvre?

CS: Over the past four to five years, much of my work has focused on state power, particularly through the lens of technology and drone warfare. I am also deeply interested in psychological warfare, and in many ways, this book is an extension of that inquiry. The way a state treats people after a war can often be a continuation of the war itself—violence does not necessary end when the fighting stops.

SM: Who are your biggest literary influences?

CS: That’s a difficult question. I wouldn’t say there is one single person who has influenced me the most—it changes constantly. My inspirations often come from everyday people rather than singular figures.

SM: Please keep doing what you’re doing, Cemile! Thank you so much for talking to us today.

Read our original recommendation of All Dogs Die here.

And from our archives! Back in 2020 Walter Schlect wrote a reflective piece on Sahin’s work and you can read that here.

Kommando Ajax: Cemile Sahin’s latest book

From publisher Aufbau’s website: “A spectacular art heist. Lost paintings. A Kurdish wedding. A sniper who fires a shot. A family caught between the Netherlands and Kurdistan, for whom nothing is as it was. In the style of a fast-cut action film, Cemile Sahin tells the story of betrayal, love, friendship and life in exile in a way that only she can.”

The book is shortlisted for the Leipzig Book Fair prize 2025.

Author photo: © Miriam Marlene Waldner

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