02/18/2026
In October, we’ll publish Walking, our second novel by Sevgi Soysal, translated from the Turkish by Maureen Freely. Walking observes the braided lives of Elâ and Memet, two young people growing up in 1970s Yenişehir. Elâ is a girl swept up in the discomfort and excitement of becoming a woman. Memet is a boy who wanders the labyrinthine streets of Tarlabaşı, thinking of dance halls, his guitar, and Pl***oy. As their stories converge, a peopled vision of Turkey cascades before us: conversations give way to fragments of nature and beauty found along city streets. Soysal writes as one uncovering and restoring a fresco, tending to its bright and unpredictable edges.
That Soysal’s work is often categorized as Turkish coup literature sometimes detracts from the breadth of her literary creativity and unapologetic feminism . . . Dawn is daringly explicit about the tribulations of the female body, from accounts of sexual assault in prison to the shame women feel about menstruation . . . Freely’s translation is clean, colloquial and confident.
— Ayten Tartici, New York Times on Dawn
