"Book Club 272" online Zoom meeting. This time we'll talk about "I dadi" by Ahmet Altan (e/o).

To participate, please write to pagina272@libero.it

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‘The Dice’

by Ahmet Altan

and/or, 2024

Translation by Nicola Verderame

A fascinating new novel by the author of the Ottoman Quartet.

The Dice is a coming-of-age novel written by Ahmet Altan while imprisoned in a Turkish penitentiary. It is the story of a boy, Ziya, who wants to make his way following the laws of pride and honour, like a samurai. Altan analyses Ziya's inner world with surgical precision to explore the recesses of his desire for revenge. In Altan's fascinating prose, the young Circassian hero tries to discover the mysteries of love and sexuality, the border between reality and fantasy, to the point of putting his own life on the line, as in a dice throw.

The Ottoman Empire is collapsing and young Ziya feels compelled to avenge his brother Arif Bey, killed by an Albanian thug. The murder brings him great fame, especially among his own people, the Circassians, but costs him a life sentence. In the Sinop penitentiary on the Black Sea, Ziya discovers the irresistible allure of gambling, which will mark his entire existence. With the help of mysterious statesmen he manages to escape, but must flee to Egypt, where he hides in the estate of a powerful pasha. In that remote place he meets Nora, daughter of the pasha's personal physician, an encounter that makes him discover that life is not all about vendettas and guns. Thanks to an amnesty, he can return to Istanbul, where he devotes himself body and soul to gambling. Thanks to his scorn for danger, in the Ottoman capital he becomes involved in an insurrection project in which he will be a key figure: Ziya is entrusted with the task of killing the grand vizir, the most powerful man in the empire. The wealthy heiress Tahire Hanım tries to dissuade him, but Ziya dreams of the fame and riches that the coup will bring him.

Ahmet Altan, one of Turkey's best-known and most popular authors, was recently freed after being imprisoned in his country since 2016 for crimes of opinion. For his activities as an opponent and critic of power, he was at first sentenced to life imprisonment. On 14 April 2021, he was released thanks to the vast solidarity movement against him in Turkey and Europe. With E/O Editions, he published the novels ‘Writer and Murderer’ and ‘Lady Life’, the collection of his defensive memoirs entitled ‘Three Manifestos for Freedom’, as well as the first three volumes of the ‘Ottoman Quartet’: ‘Like the Wound of a Sword’, ‘Love in the Days of Revolt’, ‘The Letter and the Piano’.