"My heroes are Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar, Oguz Atay, and Yusuf Atilgan.
I have become a novelist by following their footsteps ...I love
Yusuf Atilgan; he manages to remain local although he benefits from
Faulkner's works and the Western traditions."--Orhan Pamuk
"Motherland Hotel is a startling masterpiece, a perfect existential
nightmare, the portrait of a soul lost on the threshold of an
ever-postponed Eden."--Alberto Manguel "This moving and unsettling
portrait of obsession run amok might have been written in 1970s
Turkey, when social mores after Ataturk were still evolving, but it
stays as relevant as the country struggles to save the very
democratic ideals on which the Republic was rebirthed...brilliant
writing ..."--Poornima Apte, Booklist, Starred Review "Turkish
writer Atilgan's classic 1973 novel about alienation, obsession,
and precipitous decline, nimbly translated by Stark...An unsettling
study of a mind, steeped in violence, dropping off the edge of
reason." --Kirkus Reviews "A maladroit loner who runs the
seen-better-days Motherland Hotel in a backwater Turkish town,
Zeberjet has become obsessed with a female guest who stayed there
briefly and frantically anticipates her presumed return...as
Zeberjet becomes increasingly unhinged, we're drawn into his dark
interior life while coming to understand Turkey's post--Ottoman
uncertainty. Sophisticated readers will understand why Atilgan is
called the father of Turkish modernism, while those who enjoy dark
psychological novels can also appreciate."--Barbara Hoffert,
Library Journal "Yusuf Atilgan gives us a wonderful, timeless novel
about obsession, with an anti-hero who is both victim and
perpetrator, living out a life 'neither dead nor alive' in a sleepy
Aegean city. Motherland Hotel is an absolute gem of Turkish
literature."--Esmahan Aykol, author of Divorce Turkish Style "Yusuf
Atilgan, like Patrick Modiano, demonstrates how the everyday can
reflect larger passions and catastrophes. Beautifully written and
translated, Motherland Hotel can finally find the wider audience in
the west that it deserves." --Susan Daitch, author of The Lost
Civilization of Suolucidir "The freedom that Atilgan articulates
isn't the freedom of Lord Byron or Milton Friedman. It's more like
the sense of freedom that comes with finally having a diagnoses.
It's the freedom that comes from understanding that you're
imprisoned in other people's' ideas of freedom. But there's a
consolation and a quiet wisdom that comes from understanding that
these definitions will pass in turn, like guests checking out of a
hotel."--Scott Beauchamp, Full Stop Zeberjet, the last surviving
member of a once prosperous Ottoman family, is the owner of the
Motherland Hotel, a run-down establishment a rundown establishment
near the railroad station. A lonely, middle-aged introvert, his
simple life is structured by daily administrative tasks and
regular, routine sex with the hotel's maid. One day, a beautiful
woman from the capital comes to spend the night, promising to
return "next week," and suddenly Zeberjet's insular, mechanical
existence is dramatically and irrevocably changed. The mysterious
woman's presence has tantalized him, and he begins to live his days
in fevered anticipation of her return. But the week passes, and
then another, and as his fantasies become more and more obsessive,
Zeberjet gradually loses his grip on reality. Motherland Hotel was
hailed as the novel of the year when it was published in 1973,
astonishing critics with its experimental style, its intense
psychological depth and its audacious description of sexual
obsession. Zeberjet was compared to such memorable characters as
Quentin Compson in Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury and Meursault
in Albert Camus' The Stranger. While author Yusuf Atilgan had
already achieved considerable literary fame, Motherland Hotel
cemented his reputation as one of Turkey's premier modernists.
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