By Kurtulus Bastimar

256 pages.
October 2023. Paperback.

24.95 | 9781954600126

A meditation on loss, language and the will to live, A Farewell to Freedom is a fast-paced tableau
exploring the intricacies of Kurdish identity in a violent, changing world and the day-to-day realities of life
during a fascist coup.

Ahmet is a Kurdish student in a small village in Turkey. With the help of his sister, he and like-minded young people set up a library and begin reading literature and philosophy. They perform political plays in their forbidden native tongue. When tragedy besets their families and their village, they are forced into exile. In another life on the streets of Istanbul, the world tests the resolve and ethics of a precocious gangster and aspiring novelist named Ahmet. His losses, loves, and riches amount, but are followed by betrayal, gunfire, and heartbreak upon discovering the maltreatment of his daughter.

PRAISE

An end-to-end song of freedom from the tradition of a culture that encourages us to defend it with the weapon of understanding. — Zoé Valdés, author of The Weeping Woman and Yocandra in the Paradise of Nada

A Farewell to Freedom is a searing account of one man’s journey from hope and promise to the depths of despair, and his long fight back. It shows what the human heart can withstand.
—Mark T. Mustian, author of The Gendarme

The struggle for freedom is like a river. In my country, it has been flowing weakly for a century, but one day it will roar… —Nurcan Baysal, human rights defender, journalist & writer

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kurtulus Baştimar works as an international human rights lawyer representing the victims before the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention and is the Director of Prisoners Defenders Asia. The author was born in 1993 in Kars, a northeastern province of the Republic of Turkey. In 2015, he moved to the Netherlands to study European Law at Maastricht University and graduated in 2018. During his years at university, he focused on human rights. Therefore, all of his stories revolve around fundamental rights and freedom. A Farewell to Freedom is his debut novel.