Sinopsis

Abandoned by her husband, marooned by an epic snowstorm, a mother gives birth to her third child. Her sense of entrapment turns into a desperate rage in this unblinking portrait of a woman whose powerlessness becomes lethal.

Lojman tells, on its surface, the domestic tale of a Kurdish family living in a small village on a desolate plateau at the foot of the snow-capped mountains of Turkey's Van province. Virtually every aspect of the family's life is dictated by the government, from their exile to the country's remote, easternmost region to their sequestration in the grim "teacher's lodging"—or lojman—to which they're assigned. When Selma's husband walks out one day, he leaves in his wake a storm of resentment between his young children and a mother reluctant to parent them.

Written in startling, raw prose, this novel?—?the author's first to be translated into English?—?is reminiscent of Elena...