Author(s): Tezer Ozlu

Novel | Translated fiction | Turkey / Türkiye

A lyrical autofictional account of the author's fight to survive depression and carve out her own path in 1950s and 60s Istanbul.
The narrator of Cold Nights of Childhood grows up in a rapidly changing Turkey, where the atmosphere is nationalist, patriarchal, technocratic. As a misfit in search of freedom, love and happiness, she escapes to Berlin, is overcome by depression on her return, and trapped in a psychiatry clinic for five years. After electroshock therapy and inhumane treatment, she is released into the care of friends and family, making tentative steps in a halting journey towards recovery.
In her unique, unstructured style, Tezer Özlü explores the extremity of her inner life and the painful pleasures of memory.
Translated into English for the first time by Maureen Freely, this novel is a classic akin to The Bell Jar and Good Morning, Midnight.

Review: A remarkable account of mental breakdown and the long, dark road to recovery ... Maureen Freely as translator is particularly deft in capturing the beauties of Özlü's own writing * Irish Times *

Author Biography: Tezer Ozlu (1943-1986) lived in Turkey, Paris, Ankara, Istanbul, Berlin and Zurich. Cold Nights of Childhood is her first novel translated into English.

Maureen Freely is a writer, translator and Professor of English and Comparative Literary Studies and a member of English PEN.