Author(s): Atalay GÃNDÃZ
Despite a tendency in Turkish novels to be strictly local in terms of setting and characters, Livaneli uses a more global variety of settings and characters in his novels. A Cat, A Man, A Death might give the impression that it is a severe criticism of Turkish authorities in the seventies, the inclusion of characters from Spain, Chile, Japan and Iran gives the novel a more global perspective. Livaneli tends to indicate that anti-democratic governments, violence, torture, discrimination are universal problems, which cannot be reduced to only a few cultures and blamed on them. Livaneli’s novel focuses on the traumatic experience of individual cases who have to go through these bitter experiences abroad as refugees. Losing friends, family, one’s own land, freedom, social status and future prospects, political refugees in Livaneli’s novel try to hold on to life. This study aims to show that trauma theory is a quite useful tool to read Livaneli’s novels. This paper focuses only on one of Livaneli’s novels but it still relates trauma theory with short references to Livaneli’s other novels.
The Journal of International Social Research received 7760 citations as per Google Scholar report
