Our Crime is Literature

Following the essay collections named Melih Cevdet Anday's Poetry Experience: Poetry Writings (2015), Crowd's Poetry: Writings on Garip and Orhan Veli (2016), we are publishing his literary writings under the name Our Crime Literature. In this compilation, his articles on literature, some of which remained in magazines and were scattered in different essay books, were brought together. Thus, Anday's writings on literature were collected in a single book for the first time.

These articles cover a very long period between 1939 and 1996. As in all his essays, Anday evaluates the debates, events, books and authors of a period from his own unique perspective, with his habit of handling issues differently. On the one hand, it deals with literature from its aesthetic dimension, and on the other hand, it questions the social position of aesthetics. These essays of Anday, most of which were published in the newspaper, have a quality that goes beyond the limits of short columns.

In the articles, answers are sought to complex questions in a wide range of areas, from literary theory and literary history to current debates: Do we have classics? Have we been able to establish a prose (or critical language) tradition? Is the purpose of criticism to find the "truth"? Can the artist explain his own work? Does literature have social “value”? In Our Crime is Literature, Melih Cevdet Anday invites his readers to be a party to the "crime of literature".

(From the Promotional Bulletin)

Cover Design: Emir Tali
Editor: Mehmet Said Aydin

Dough Type: 2nd Dough

Size: 13.5 x 19.5

First Print Year: 2017

Number of Printings: 1st Edition

Number of Pages: 630

Media Type: Paperback