In Dust and Smoke - 1

The War of Independence is a great victory against both external enemies and their internal collaborators. This novel is the epic of the Anatolian people who showed their heart and all their strength against the state and the enemy that cooperated with the enemy in Anatolia. In this novel, you will find the wonderful story of the resistance of a handful of people who believed in Independence against betrayal...

As a writer coming from the village, I owed it to myself to write the trilogy of novels called Dust in Smoke / Homeland They Said / Villagers and I carried this weight inside me for twenty years. I realized that I could not get rid of this debt without writing. I aimed to examine the place of the Turkish peasant within the state and the foundation, its development and its relationship with various heroes from 1918 to the present day. Maybe this is a showdown; with exploitative classes, intellectuals and administrators…

I personally experienced the loneliness and despair of our villagers in my childhood.

He who served in the military for sixteen years, pulled triggers and was wounded on all fronts of the First World War and the War of Independence. I am the son of a peasant who was left without land, job and bread when he returned to the village. I spent my childhood listening to him. I can't forget the day I became a student at the Village Teachers' School (later the Village Institute) in 1938 when he said, "This state is educating you, may all I suffer, all the blood and sweat I shed be halal." Let me benefit from it directly. But at that age, I could not adequately understand the importance of this; I only understood it later. Still, I added a lot of his memories to my novel.

I present these novels to the memory of those forgotten people whose bones, blood and sweat were at the foundation of the Republic of Turkey, most of whom are not even known today. My father was one of them.
-Talip Apaydin-
(From the Promotional Bulletin)



Number of Pages: 418

Print Year: 2016


Language: Turkish
Publisher: Literature Publishing

Cover Design : Emel Atik
Illustrator : Aydin Toprak Apaydin