Life's Good, Brother

It’s 1925. Ahmet hides in a stone hut in Izmir with fellow Communist Ismail. Bitten by a possibly rabid dog and sure that seeking treatment courts imprisonment, Ahmet marks the door for each symptomless day of the 41 until he’s in the clear. He casts back to his student days in Moscow and the Russian girl he had to leave without notice. He also casts forward to the 1930s and Ismail’s repeated imprisonment, culminating in torture. Finally, he vaults to 1962, when, among his friends again, Ismail’s wife fortuitously repeats Ismail’s words from 1925, “Life’s good, brother.” This autobiographical novel by Turkey’s premier poet, in which both Ahmet and Ismail stand for him, is a major source for translator Blasing’s biography of Hikmet (reviewed in this issue). Hikmet’s commitment to accessibility ensures that the novel is never obscure or confusing, despite sparingly shifting between first- and third-person narration, even in a single paragraph, a seemingly cinematic device, like cutting from medium-shot to close-up or vice versa, that alters our emotional perspective on the characters. --Ray Olson

It’s 1925. Ahmet hides in a stone hut in Izmir with fellow Communist Ismail. Bitten by a possibly rabid dog and sure that seeking treatment courts imprisonment, Ahmet marks the door for each symptomless day of the 41 until he’s in the clear. He casts back to his student days in Moscow and the Russian girl he had to leave without notice. He also casts forward to the 1930s and Ismail’s repeated imprisonment, culminating in torture. Finally, he vaults to 1962, when, among his friends again, Ismail’s wife fortuitously repeats Ismail’s words from 1925, “Life’s good, brother.” This autobiographical novel by Turkey’s premier poet, in which both Ahmet and Ismail stand for him, is a major source for translator Blasing’s biography of Hikmet (reviewed in this issue). Hikmet’s commitment to accessibility ensures that the novel is never obscure or confusing, despite sparingly shifting between first- and third-person narration, even in a single paragraph, a seemingly cinematic device, like cutting from medium-shot to close-up or vice versa, that alters our emotional perspective on the characters. --Ray Olson