Sometimes, when I lose myself in my writing, my cellmates either go out to the courtyard or retreat to their beds, but I can’t expect them to do this all the time. I asked the prison administration to let us have a second table in our cell, so that I can work without disturbing my cellmates, but that request was denied. My cellmates are too kind to complain about it, but when I sit and write at this table with my papers spread all over it, their daily life becomes a bit harder. We eat at this table, we drink coffee at this table, we read the newspapers at this table, we watch our small TV, sitting at this table. Unfortunately, I don’t have the luxury of determining the circumstances in which I work. In the darkness created by oppressive regimes, writers’ words are the light of matches.

How do you write each day?Īhmet Altan: The book I wrote in prison is not a comedy, but it’s a novel with more than a few amusing parts in it. And you recently finished a new novel, described by The Guardian as a comedy. YZ Chin: I Will Never See the World Again was longlisted for the Baillie Gifford prize. I can pass through your walls with ease.” “Because, like all writers, I have magic. Prison did not put a stop to his writing life. From Silivri Prison, Istanbul, he answered the following questions through his translator Yasemin Çongar, describing his daily conditions, and the novel he recently completed. Though the Altan brothers’ life sentences have since been overturned, Ahmet Altan was still incarcerated when I interviewed him. How was I supposed to do this? There was only one way to perform this miracle. As he writes: “I had to blow a whiff of air into this dead life. I Will Never See the World Again is Ahmet Altan’s remarkable response to what PEN America rightly calls an “unjust sentence.” The book consists of short pieces penned by Altan in prison, many detailing his mental journeys to transcend the dehumanizing environment imposed upon him.

Though I Get Home by YZ Chin