This is a Turkey-centric list: nearly all the stories feature Turkey and – with the exception of one – are by authors who are from there or who have ancestral ties to the country. Like my upcoming novel, a few take ‘Istanbul’ and key moments of political upheaval in Turkey as themes. Opting to select the majority of the stories from one country inevitably narrowed my list: I could only consider stories that had been written in or translated into English. This, for me, reinforced the obvious, which can easily be overlooked: the tremendous value translation brings to literature. Regrettably, since his novels have yet to be translated into English, I was unable to include a novel excerpt from one of my most favourite authors Ayhan Geçgin, on this list.
A Personal Anthology 