‘There are three ways to face life: put up with it, fight or flee.’ After eight years in Turkey, Gül leaves her native Anatolia and returns to Germany. Reunited with her husband Fuat, she observes life there from the margins. As age gives her ever deeper insight, she sees society change rapidly, and yet her ability to connect to the people around her remains constant. Gül’s life is shaped by the melancholy of separation, but with her warm-hearted and accepting outlook she has learned to endure homesickness and longing. Full of emotions and poetry but told without sentimentality, Selim Özdoğan’s account of Gül’s journey is a tender and moving novel about home, cultural identity and a life between two worlds.

‘Anchored in the circumstances of this century and yet timeless, this is the story of exiles and homecomings, of silences and distances and loneliness but with a hopefulness at its heart. Above all it is a story about women and age: an old woman’s careful, thoughtful, analytic eye reflecting on motherhood, friendship, marriage, survival. This book is full of wisdom.’ Jane Campbell, author of Cat Brushing