Journey to the Edge of Life by Tezer Özlü, 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.