The latest addition to my website is Oya Baydar‘s Kayıp Söz (The Lost Word). This is a superb novel about a famous Turkish writer, Ömer Eren, who has lost his word, i.e. has writer’s block. We follow his attempt to deal with this, when, at Ankara bus station, he meets a Kurdish couple, The wife has been accidentality shot by carousing soldiers and he not only helps them but later heads out to the Kurdish part of the country to find out what is really going on in that part of the world. Meanwhile, his wife, a successful scientist, is trying to reconnect with their son, Deniz, who has fled Turkey to live on a remote island off the coast of Norway. On a visit to Turkey his Norwegian wife is killed by a suicide bomber and he has retreated even more into himself, living only for their young son. The whole issue of responsibility and how best to live one’s life, as well as the issue of violence to deal with political problems are just two of the many ideas Baydar confronts in this book and she tells a superb story as well.