Nazlı Koca’s debut novel, The Applicant, is a gut-wrenching story that can make you giggle but additionally query why and whether or not you have to be laughing in any respect.
Immigrant and refugee experiences might be surreal and nightmarish, however for these fortunate sufficient to succeed in their locations, life might be crammed with a sudden Kafkaesque darkish humor. Such is the case for Koca’s protagonist, Leyla, a Turkish immigrant in Berlin. After failing out of college, Leyla tries to sue her means again right into a pupil visa, whereas within the meantime working at an Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland-themed resort.
As Leyla navigates Berlin’s nightlife, looking for some type of solace, she meets a right-wing Swedish vacationer, and instantly she has an in: She can keep in Germany if she accepts a conventional, conservative life, though it might imply giving up her profession in artwork. Initially this discount appears higher than returning to Turkey to stay together with her mom and sister, however ultimately Leyla begins to query what she is de facto trying to find.
Written in diary type, The Applicant is certain to attract many comparisons to different works (I discovered it to be like an inversion of the German movie Ali: Fear Eats the Soul), however the obvious is to Sylvia Plath’s poem by the identical identify. Both items play with the concept of conformity, and whereas Plath focuses on the commercialization of femininity, Koca takes a extra racialized method. Leyla experiences refined racism from virtually each character, and thru these interactions, we witness the convergence of completely different ideologies of racial supremacy because of immigration, and the way, with the presence of her Swedish lover, white supremacy holds punitive energy over all of them. Through the diary format, we get an inside take a look at Leyla’s pressured conformity in what is probably a response to the surreal, dehumanizing laundry checklist Plath wrote a long time in the past.
Despite these similarities, The Applicant is a really distinctive e-book, significantly in its profound international scope. Leyla meets characters from everywhere in the world who’ve come to Europe looking for a greater life. Her romantic beliefs of Berlin shatter early on, and she or he is left jaded and hooked on medication, falling into the precise stereotype she idealized artistically. This underscores Koca’s biggest energy: her capability to search out the tragedy, irony and humor within the immigrant expertise, exhibiting us how international energy has warped our capability to search out happiness and to even know what happiness is.
This is a robust e-book that pinpoints precisely the place our contradictions lie. It is so highly effective, in reality, that it may well do all this whereas nonetheless making you giggle.
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