Dawn breaks with a resounding call to leaders around the world. Formerly a leader of the Peoples' Democratic Party in Turkey, Selahattin Demirtaş has been imprisoned since 2016 for fighting for human rights. Since his detainment at Edirne, he has campaigned for president and also written this short story collection. Refracting fiction to reality and back again, Dawn spins a delicate chain of reactions. Ordinary moments drip with precariousness and create friction within an oral storytelling sensibility. In "Seher," a woman pins her hopes on a colleague, a fixation that unravels her family. The sensible protagonist in "Nazan the Cleaning Lady" exits her bus to walk when the road is blocked and finds herself in the middle of a heated protest. "The Mermaid" traces a truncated Syrian lineage. Multiple narrators in the collection fixate on women from passing glances, from afar or from memory that give their subjects varying degrees of autonomy.
Dawn draws the topography of Turkish experiences, giving shape to a map of emotion and possibility in the ordinary. Each story is enveloped with the presence of women, whether situated as the narrator or the subject of observation. By focusing on the quotidian, Demirtaş mirrors a world where not a single person is untouched by human rights violations. It is the cause for irrevocable change. Marrying literature and politics, Dawn colors life with its complexities in this soft yet volatile collection. --Amanda Ibarra, events manager, Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill, N.C.