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Locked Away

Michael Hayward

The heyday of the “instant book”—titles addressing current events, produced in short order—has passed, a victim of the internet, the shrinking attention spans of readers, and the diminishing half-life of news events, as one indignity supplants another within weeks or days. Two recent titles, however, show that the instant book is not entirely dead. The Mueller Report, a current American bestseller, provides the full (redacted) text of the investigation into alleged ties between Russian officials and Trump’s presidential campaign. The other, I Will Never See the World Again (Granta Books), is an English translation (by Yasemin Çongar) of the Turkish writer Ahmet Altan’s prison memoir, written during the period following Altan’s arrest in 216 for what the jacket copy describes as “Kafkaesque charges by Erdogan’s corrupt regime.” Altan, a Turkish journalist and editor, was accused of sending “subliminal messages” to those involved in the 216 Turkish coup d’état attempt; in September 218 he was sentenced to life in prison. In I Will Never See the World Again, Altan describes the circumstances of his arrest and trial, and provides a glimpse behind the walls of his prison, where he grapples with the very real possibility that he will never be released. “We will spend the rest of our lives alone in a cell that is four metres long and three metres wide. We will be taken out to see the sunlight for only one hour each day.” The recent election in Turkey may provide a measure of hope to Altan and others like him, with Erdogan’s party losing its grip on Ankara, the capital, and on Istanbul (though Erdogan has forced a rerun of the vote in Istanbul).

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