Description

By Belgin Durmush

ISBN: 978-1-84747-634-0
Published: 2008
Pages: 180
Key Themes: fiction, short stories, challenging normality, childhood experiences, isolation

Description

The five stories in this book deal with the attempt of the characters to survive in a world that does not make sense. In The Factory, society has broken down and social discourse has ceased. The Donkey and The Greens both deal with a society that is intact but unhinged where the characters have broken down and do not conform to standard behaviour. All the stories in this collection deal with a main character that is isolated and alone, living in a strange and incomprehensible world that they accept without question. For these characters, the world is not normal, it is simply that they have found themselves within it as if by accident. The concept of normality is challenged here, for normality itself has proven to be a bit strange.

About the Author

Belgin has been writing fiction for fifteen years. Her stories are to a great extent inspired by her childhood experiences which were unsettling and frightening at times as her father suffered from paranoid schizophrenia . When she was growing up, the idea of normality did not exist as every moment was fraught with tension due to her fathers unpredictable moods.

The strange behaviour within everyday life that Belgin experienced as a child is reflected in her stories where there is often an unnerving quality beneath the surface of the ordinary.