Colors of Other Lands

After An Utterly Improbable Alternative History of Istanbul, Barış Uzunhan returns with a novel. Colors of Other Lands sets out from the postcard collection he has kept and published for his son for more than fourteen years, and tells a road story through invented characters.

Doğu, who makes work out of the postcards that reach him — together with his close friend Ali, and has turned it into an agency — develops a fascination with Ebru, a stranger who sends him postcards regularly, and sets off after her. The story changes direction in Antalya, where he meets Duru instead.

Duru has come to Antalya looking for her mother. Following the Mediterranean and Aegean coasts together, making work about the amphitheatres of the ancient cities they stop in, the two of them come to know one another — and at the end of a journey shaped by the road, the ancient cities, each other and the people they were chasing, they arrive somewhere neither of them expected.

Accompanied by Bulutsuzluk Özlemi songs, this road looks set to do the reader as much good as it does Doğu and Duru. The road always does.