Mushfik is a young man growing up in Turkey, first in Sarikum, a small coastal village, and later in urban Istanbul. He comes of age in an atmosphere of sublimated, disoriented eroticism, his impulses restrained by religious and sexual taboos, rigid gender roles, stifling maternal love, and the enforced silences of social decorum. Unable to adapt easily to society's unspoken rules, he is driven to the point of insanity from which he must slowly and painfully return. Told from several points of view and structured in a series of intersecting flashbacks and interior monologues, Death in Troy describes the difficult geography of male intimacy from multiple perspectives--adolescent friendship, homosexual desire, mother-son bonds, and the relationships between men and women. In a complex chorus of styles and voices, Karasu evokes states of exaltation, humiliation, passion, and despair to create a jarring disharmony of one boy's growth into manhood. "[Karasu's] refusal to be bound by the formal constraints of "The Novel" is meant to reflect his characters' refusal to be bound by the moral constraints of society as they confront their sexualities in a country that, though secular in government, is still largely Muslim in culture." --East Bay Express "Death in Troy is a teeming, elliptical examination of repressed homosexuality by popular Turkish writer Bilge Karasu...Sin, madness and guilt are all balanced by flashes of beautiful imagery and poetic language." --Publishers Weekly Bilge Karasu (1930-1995) was born in Istanbul. Often referred to as "the sage of Turkish literature," during his lifetime he published collections of stories, novels, and two books of essays. Karasu is an influential reference point in the progress of Turkish fiction writing. A perfectionist, a philosopher, and a master of literary arts, he left behind a body of work, which, although intricately woven and at times obscure, skillfully outlines a world unmatched in its crystal clear transparency. Karasu's novel, Night, was published in English translation by Louisiana State University Press in 1994 and was awarded the Pegasus Prize for Literature. Death In Troy is the second of his works translated in English and was published by City Lights in 2002. Karasu's The Garden of Departed Cats, was published by New Directions in 2004. In 2012, City Lights once again published another one of his novels A Long Day's Evening which was shortlisted for 2013 PEN Award for Translation.

Abandoned by her husband, marooned by an epic snowstorm, a mother gives birth to her third child. Her sense of entrapment turns into a desperate rage in this unblinking portrait of a woman whose powerlessness becomes lethal. Lojman tells, on its surface, the domestic tale of a Kurdish family living in a small village on a desolate plateau at the foot of the snow-capped mountains of Turkey’s Van province. Virtually every aspect of the family’s life is dictated by the government, from their exile to the country’s remote, easternmost region to their sequestration in the grim "teacher’s lodging"—or lojman—to which they’re assigned. When Selma’s husband walks out one day, he leaves in his wake a storm of resentment between his young children and a mother reluctant to parent them.  Written in startling, raw prose, this novel — the author’s first to be translated into English — is reminiscent of Elena Ferrante’s masterful Days of Abandonment, though its private dramas are made all the more vivid against an imposing natural landscape that exerts a powerful, life-threatening force.  In short, propulsive chapters, Lojman spins a domestic drama crystallized through the family’s mental and physical claustrophobia. Vivid daydreams morph with cold realities, and as the family’s descent reaches its nadir, their world is transformed into a surreal, gelatinous prison from which there is no escape.

"One of Turkey's most interesting modern writers."--Booklist When the Emperor of Byzantium orders the destruction of all religious paintings and icons, Constantinople is thrown into crisis. Fear grips the monastery where Andronikos, a young monk, is thrown into a spiritual crisis. Amidst stirrings of resistance he decides to escape, leaving behind his beloved Ioakim, who must confront his own crisis of faith and decide where to place his allegiance. The dualities of dogma and faith, individual and society, East and West, are embodied in a story of prohibited love and devotion to the unseen. Bilge Karasu (1930--1995) was born in Istanbul. Often referred to as "the sage of Turkish literature," during his lifetime he published collections of stories, novels, and two books of essays. "The 'other' is usually construed as a person or society removed from 'us' by space. But Karasu has chosen to study his 'other' across the divide of time, pushing readers to compare the profound identity crises engulfing individuals in ancient Byzantium to those in the early Turkish Republic. In doing so, Karasu shows the futility of separating ourselves from 'others' -- and the social upheaval that results when we do."--Time Out Istanbul

Efe Duyan translates the silent intention behind our instinctive, urgent need of human expression and connection. Duyan's poetry is based on finding unique linguistic forms that fit the respective content of the poem. Through a visible structure, he combines complex metaphors in a rhythmic way, to integrate the daily language by decontextualizing it, and to construct a network of meaning in the background. He is influenced by the art movements of Futurism, Surrealism, conceptual art, and medieval Middle Eastern poetry as well as the modern conception of functionality in architecture. Some poems, built like houses with architectural intention, draw us in through their overall design, clean fine lines breaking at striking angles, guiding our eyes through carefully defined spaces opening to hallways that irresistibly lead us to unexpected enclosures where natural light plays among the walls breathe life into the lives for which they are intended. Where form and function are inseparable, the space is not merely for dwelling. It asks to be experienced. Physically, materially.

In an ancient Mediterranean city, a tradition is maintained: every ten years an archaic game of human chess is staged, the players (visitors versus locals) bearing weapons. This archaic game, the central event of The Garden of the Departed Cats, may prove as fatal as the deadly attraction our narrator feels for the local man who is the Vizier, or Captain, of the home team. Their "romance" (which, though inconclusive, magnetizes our protagonist to accept the Vizier's challenge to play) provides the skeletal structure of this experimental novel. Each of their brief interactions works as a single chapter. And interleaved between their chapters are a dozen fable-like stories. The folk tale might concern a 13th-century herbal that identifies a kind of tulip, a "red salamander," which dooms anyone who eats it to never tell a lie ever again. Or the tale might be an ancient story of a terrible stoat-like creature that feeds for years on the body of whomever it sinks its claws into, like guilt. These strange fables work independently of the main narrative but, in curious and unpredictable ways, (and reminiscent of Primo Levi's The Periodic Table), they echo and double its chief themes: love, its recalcitrance, its cat-like finickiness, and its refusal to be rushed. With many strata to mine, The Garden of the Departed Cats is a work of peculiar beauty and strangeness, the whole layered and shiny like a piece of mica.