The Renovation
By Kenan Orhan
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LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2026
LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARDS 2026
The Renovation is a playful and poignant portrait of one family caught in the tides of history, grappling with grief, exile, politics and the painful absurdity of love
Dilara is renovating her apartment. She wants a brand-new waterfall shower with massage jets; she wants a marble bench and a double vanity unit. But when the renovation is done, she discovers a problem. Where the bathroom should be, the workmen have instead built a Turkish prison cell.
At first she is outraged. Is this a prank? A mistake? A veiled threat? Dilara’s family are exiles – they left Turkey many years ago and have never been back. The last thing she wants is a piece of her homeland appearing uninvited in her new home.
But as the weeks pass, her indignation gives way to curiosity. Beyond the cell door, she glimpses Turkish prison guards going about their work. Through the cell walls, she hears Turkish prisoners pacing, rustling, talking in their sleep. And in the strange, impossible air of the cell itself, she smells the sesame scent of freshly baked simit bread, she tastes the fine dust of the Anatolian steppe on her tongue.
Dilara has no shortage of responsibilities, worries, real problems. She has a dying father, a highly neurotic husband, a dwindling savings account and no job. And yet she finds herself drawn back again and again to the mysterious prison cell, and through it to a city that once belonged to her – to the salt wind off the Marmara, the sky full of gulls and domes and minarets – back to Istanbul.
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