Cockroach

Change is beginning. Repent, you arrogant, upright creatures!
While the brightness of Kafka's insect Gregor Samsa's shell still dazzles our eyes and Dostoyevsky's underground creatures are still moving in our minds, Rawi Hage has a completely different way of looking at the images of "cockroach" and "underground".
We meet Hage's unnamed hero, who migrated from the Middle East to Canada, to the slums of Montreal, after an unsuccessful suicide attempt. While the reasons that led this hero, who sees himself as half human and half cockroach, to suicide and the history of his close circle of immigrants are gradually revealed, his efforts to hold on in the "coldness" of Canada are also conveyed. The Cockroach is also a struggle for existence, just like De Niro's Game, Hage's first novel, which won the International Impac Dublin Literary Award. I turned my back on him and looked at the old city with its churches, old houses, and the city that was preparing to make way for tall buildings. I wondered how I got here. How ridiculous. That's ridiculous. The real question was: Where should he end up? All those who leave their places migrate to improve their lives, but my purpose was to improve my death. Maybe what's important is the way it ends, not the way it's lived, I thought. Maybe we, just like elephants, are moving towards the graves we have chosen.



Number of Pages: 270

Print Year: 2011


Language: Turkish
Publisher: Everest Publications