DIE GERMANISTIN: Riveting Forays into German-Language Literature by Sheridan Marshall. CEMILE SAHIN IN LONDON
Cemile Sahin is a visual artist and writer who came to London in January 2025 to promote the English translation of her second novel, Alle Hunde Sterben (Aufbau Verlag, 2020). All Dogs Die has been translated by Ayça Türkoğlu for MTO Press. I had the pleasure of interviewing Cemile for New Books in German, but will focus here on the mesmerising evening at the Close-Up Film Centre in Shoreditch, which saw Cemile discussing her work with the British writer and multidisciplinary artist, Tice Cin, followed by a screening of her short film, ‘Spring’, the first instalment of her multi-part project, ‘Four Ballads for My Father’.
The Close-Up Film Centre is an immediately welcoming venue, situated just off Brick Lane, with low lighting and comfortably worn leather couches in a café bar-cum-library whose walls are lined with books dedicated to the history of film. The cinema room seats forty, and its hushed acoustics provided the ideal setting for the intense conversation between Tice Cin and Cemile Sahin that preceded the screening of Cemile’s film.
All Dogs Die is a searing account of the violence and loss experienced by nine individuals and their families under the totalitarian regime in Turkey during the 1990s. It is an important book for many reasons, including the coverage it gives to Kurdish experiences of persecution, torture and marginalisation that were often not part of international news stories as they were happening. Tice’s questions focused on the themes of All Dogs Die, as well as the novel’s linguistic motifs, and on Cemile’s experiences of writing about politically motivated violence and torture.
Tice and Cemile discussed the novel’s filmic feel, created by the directorial style of the opening paragraph:
WE SEE A TOWER BLOCK IN WESTERN TURKEY.
THE BLOCK HAS SEVENTEEN FLOORS. EACH FLOOR HAS
SIX FLATS. THERE IS A LIFT. A CELLAR, BUT NO ATTIC.
WE’RE IN THE STAIRWELL. IT’S DARK. UNIFORMED MEN
ENTER FROM THE LEFT-HAND SIDE OF THE FRAME.
THEY CHARGE UP THE STAIRS.
This paragraph starkly sets the scene – as well as the menacing tone – for the nine ‘episodes’ that follow, detailing the brutal incidences of state-sponsored violence that are wrought on the novel’s nine principal characters: Necla, Murat, Nurten, Birgül, Sara, Umut, Haydar, Metin, and Devrim. Cemile described how the architecture of the tower block in which the novel is set is crucial to the characters’ emotional states. Their respective responses to the persecution and torture they have undergone as well as their ongoing experiences of surveillance are all moulded by the structure of the building they inhabit: it signifies a place of fake safety, a place where the characters have sought refuge, but where the police can still break down the doors at any moment.
Cemile revealed that she is a conceptualist who thinks about her artworks for years before beginning their execution. Both her novels and her films are mapped out in great detail in advance. I think that the meticulous choreography of All Dogs Die is part of what endows it with a surprising sense of hopefulness, even in the face of the relentless violence and suffering it chronicles: the great care that Cemile Sahin takes in telling her characters’ stories will never be a form of redress for what they – or the real-life victims – have endured, but it signifies a way of being in the world that is a counter to the horrific brutality that was inflicted upon them.
Similarly, Cemile’s film ‘Spring’ pays attention to human suffering which has been caused by government actions. ‘Spring’ focuses on a Kurdish family whose members have been displaced as a result of the Southeastern Anatolia Project or GAP dam project in Turkey, which flooded their home in North Kurdistan. The family is now divided between Paris and Istanbul, and the film profiles the agony of this separation and loss. There were a lot of tears shed among the audience during the screening of ‘Spring’, and a consensus in the discussion that followed that people are eager for the next instalment of this moving project.
Cemile Sahin is doing great things, and is definitely an artist to watch – and read! – in the future.
By Sheridan Marshall
Sheridan Marshall works as a translator from German into English, and as Editorial Consultant for New Books in German. She was Deputy Editor of The Austrian Riveter.
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