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I Will Never See the World Again: The Memoir of an Imprisoned Writer by Ahmet Altan, Yasemin Çongar
kingofspain93's review against another edition
3.25
Altan’s insights are valuable, but his writing is not particularly strong. He has a reliance on clumsy metaphors; it’s very possibly a cultural or translation issue. For example, his description of what it felt like for time to no longer be broken up by clocks was enthralling. He managed to convey something about imprisonment that I wouldn’t have considered otherwise, and in a way that made it sound genuinely horrifying. The “clock” that he invented to track time and keep his sanity, which simultaneously looked like him losing his grip, was a powerful passage. But his metaphor describing the entirety of unbroken time as a giant lizard didn’t capture the sense of lived reality that the rest of the chapter did. It felt silly. And that sums up this whole book.
I suspect that, because I haven’t read many authors’ experiences of imprisonment, I was especially interested in what he did manage to describe well. Once I read more, maybe the impact that Altan had on me will lessen. As his is a reality that I want to understand something about, especially since I live in the country with the highest rate of incarceration in the world, I think I Will Never See the World Again was worth my time to read. And again, not being Turkish, reading it in Turkish, or even having read other translated Turkish literature previously, I think that something is probably lost.
anneke_b's review against another edition
4.0
Writer Ahmet Altan has been sentenced to life in prison in Turkey. In this short book, he describes his arrest, life in prison and much, much more. A light read on a heavy topic! Got some great thoughts and ideas from this book.
Highly recommended.
Highly recommended.