What Remains - by Leylâ Erbil (Paperback)

About the Book

"An experimental collection of "proems" from poet and author Leylãa Erbil, the first Turkish woman to ever be nominated for the Nobel. These poems recount the history and present of the Turkish state, from the Byzantine Empire through the twentieth-century Turkey of Erbil's experience. Now available for the first time in translation, What Remains is a fearless, deeply felt collection from one of the most influential Turkish writers in recent history"-- Provided by publisher.

Book Synopsis

An experimental collection of "proems" from poet and author Leylâ Erbil, the first Turkish woman toever be nominated for the Nobel.

In this remarkable novel-in-verse, a young woman named Lahzen comes of age grappling with a culture gripped by interethnic tension. Bearing witness to the mutilation of a Kurdish journalist, the political imprisonment of her lover, and the violence of the man her widowed mother has taken up with, Lahzen reaches back into the past, searching for the root of this evil.

From the Byzantine Empire to the twentieth-century Turkey of Erbil's experience, What Remains searches urgently for a way to escape these recurrent cycles of suffering, while preserving hope in the smallest acts of kindness. Now available for the first time in translation, with an introduction by Ayten Tartici, What Remains is a fearless, deeply felt collection from one of the most influential Turkish writers in recent history.

Review Quotes

"Erbil is a chronicler of the cracks, of what disrupts a sense of wholeness and cohesion... At the heart of the book is a dirge for what has been lost in the formation of the Turkish state and its accompanying nationalism." --Asymptote Magazine

"How odd that a writer who first started making her mark in 1956 should remain a pioneer still today . . . How odd that, even after half a century, no writer capable of surpassing her has yet appeared." --Mahmut Temizyürek, poet and literary critic

"Leylâ Erbil is a consummate literary artist." --Turkish National Committee for UNESCO

About the Author

One of the most influential Turkish writers of the 20th century, Leylâ Erbil was an innovative literary stylist who tackled issues at the heart of what it means to be human, in mind and body. Erbil ventured where few writers dared to tread, turning her lens to the tides of social norms and the shaping of identities, focusing intently on emotional conflict, and plumbing the depths of history and psyche. In 2002 and 2004 Erbil was nominated as a candidate for the Nobel Prize for Literature by Turkey PEN. She died in Istanbul in 2013.

Ayten Tartici is a Turkish-born, New York-based writer. Her essays have appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, Slate and The Yale Review, among other venues. She holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from Yale University, where she was awarded the John Addison Porter prize for best scholarship university-wide. She was selected as an American Council of Learned Societies Emerging Voices Postdoctoral Fellow at Georgetown and has taught literature at Columbia University. She is a 2025-2026 Writer-in-Residence at the James Merrill House, where she is working on a memoir that blends in cultural criticism.