52 Factory Lane

‘You’ll live out your lives in a foreign country,’ Gül is warned. But the whole world is foreign when you’re far from your loved ones. The train ride to Germany ushers in the days of long-awaited letters, night-time telephone calls and blissful summers back home. The years of hard work will flow like water before her house in Turkey is built and she can return.

Until then, there will be fireworks, young love, and the cassette tapes of the summer played on repeat. In these years, Gül will learn all kinds of longing: for her two daughters, for her father, for scents, colours and fruit. Yet Factory Lane in this cold, incomprehensible country becomes a different kind of home.

A novel about how home is found in many places from the author of The Blacksmith’s Daughter (9783863912949)

‘Honest, urgent and emotional.’ Augsburger Allgemeine

‘An absolutely recommended novel that quietly stimulates the reader’s thoughts and portrays the hard work behind seeing a new country as home.’ migazin

Author Biography

Selim Özdoğan was born in Germany in 1971 and has been publishing his prose since 1995. He has won numerous prizes and grants and taught creative writing at the University of Michigan.

Ayça Türkoğlu is a writer and literary translator based in North London. Her translation interests include the literature of the Turkish diaspora in Germany and minority literatures in Turkey. Katy Derbyshire was born in London and has lived in Berlin for over twenty years. She is an award-winning translator of contemporary German writers, including Olga Grjasnowa, Angela Steidele and Clemens Meyer. Ayça Türkoğlu is a writer and literary translator based in North London. Her translation interests include the literature of the Turkish diaspora in Germany and minority literatures in Turkey. Katy Derbyshire was born in London and has lived in Berlin for over twenty years. She is an award-winning translator of contemporary German writers, including Olga Grjasnowa, Angela Steidele and Clemens Meyer. Having taught literary translation in New York, New Delhi and Norwich, she now co-hosts a monthly translation lab and the bi-monthly Dead Ladies Show in Berlin. Katy is the publisher of the V&Q Books imprint.