Lojman

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.