Journey to the Edge of Life - Paperback

by Tezer Özlü (Author), Maureen Freely (Translator)

A writer finds solitude and salvation tracing the lives and deaths of three of her literary lights in a haunted and lyrical travelogue from NBCC Award-winner Tezer Özlü.

An unnamed writer embarks on an obsessive journey through Europe, drawn to the gravesites of her literary idols--Cesare Pavese, Italo Svevo, Franz Kafka--putting her life, her writing, and her politics in conversation with theirs.

Untethered and spirit-like herself, she moves among European cities: Berlin, Hamburg, Prague, Vienna, Zagreb, and Belgrade. At times there are companions--lovers and others--but she remains steadfast in her solitude. As she is uncannily drawn to Pavese's suicide, her journey transmutes passion for literature into desire for meaning.

Occupying a liminal space between past and present, life and death, Journey to the Edge of Life is a deeply inquisitive, atmospheric, and rebellious novel that shows what such a journey can mean for a woman who has spent her life within the confines established by others.

Author Biography

Tezer Özlü (1943-1986) claimed her place in Turkish letters by breaking every rule imposed on her. Though she was misunderstood by most throughout her short life, her writings have gone on to inspire a new generation of feminist writers and readers. Her English-language debut, Cold Nights of Childhood won the 2023 National Book Critics Circle Award. Journey to the End of Life is her second novel to be translated into English.

Maureen Freely is a writer, translator and Professor of English and Comparative Literary Studies and a member of English PEN. She is the author of six novels, three works of non-fiction and is the translator of five books by the Turkish Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk.