Europa Editions, 352 pp., $17.00
Altan’s punishment for that sin—he was charged with “sending subliminal messages” to topple Turkey’s strongman Recep Tayyip Erdoğan—has been severe. “I will never see a sky unframed by the walls of a courtyard,” he realized upon receiving an aggravated life sentence in 2018. But politics has been an abiding theme of his work since the mid-1970s, when he cut his teeth as a young reporter. For much of his career, eroticism and the intrigues of Turkish politics had vitalized Altan’s writings and helped make him a household name. In 1982, aged 32, his debut novel launched a career marked by controversy and bestsellers: His second novel,