Bøger af Fatma Aydemir

I Fatma Aydemirs fortælling om familien Yilmaz bringes tre generationers følelser under højtryk, da slægtshemmeligheder afsløres i en veldrejet spejling af det 20. århundredes europæiske indvandrerhistorie.1999: I tredive år har Hüseyin arbejdet i Tyskland, og nu kan han endelig opfylde sin drøm og købe en smuk, moderne lejlighed i Istanbul. Men den dag han skal flytte ind, falder han om og dør af et hjerteanfald. Og nu må hans kone Emine og deres fire børn Hakan, Perihan, Ümit og Sevda rejse fra Tyskland til moderlandet Tyrkiet for at begrave ham.Fatma Aydemirs store roman er fortællingen om seks fundamentalt forskellige mennesker, der tilfældigvis er i familie med hinanden. Alle bærer de på hemmeligheder, længsler og sår på sjælen, men det, der forener dem, er følelsen af, at nogen holder øje med dem i Hüseyins lejlighed i Istanbul. Ånder handler om familie, både den der var, er og bliver, den der taler sandt og holder hemmeligheder, om Vestens moderne historie og Europas håbefulde 70’ere og svigtende selvtillid i begyndelsen af det 21. århundrede.

A family at the end of the 20th century in all its complexity: full of secrets, questions, and love. Hüseyin has been working in Germany, carefully saving to buy an apartment back in Istanbul. But just as this new future is in reach, his tired heart gives up. The children rush to him, each of them conflicted as they process the news.

After laboring in Germany for thirty years, Hüseyin uses his hard-earned savings to purchase a sunny and spacious flat in Istanbul, envisioning the joys of retirement in his home country with his wife, Emine, by his side. But in a cruel twist of fate, he dies of a heart attack on the day he moves in. As Hüseyin's children and wife travel to Turkey for his funeral, the novel explores their lives and dreams: a teenage son struggling to embrace his sexuality; a college-educated daughter desperate to align conflicting facets of her identity; a first-born son racialized and profiled all his life, forced to perform a role he could not choose for himself; a daughter left behind in rural Turkey who dreams of recapturing her family's love after joining them in Germany as a teenager; and a mother unable to break free from the cycles of violence that have defined her. In this epic tale, Fatma Aydemir explores the lives of characters who could not be more different from one another--except in their insatiable desires to be understood. Rather than a seamless narrative, the novel circles around suppressed memories, unspoken trauma, and buried pasts. Turning expectations and stereotypes of the immigrant experience on their side, Aydemir shows how we all grapple with power and beauty, the holes in our lives, and the demons that hover just out of sight.