Hasret

Hasret (Longing) follows Tacettin, a young Muslim man in the Anatolian town of Keskin, who falls in love with Patricia, the daughter of a Greek tavern owner, in the years surrounding the Turkish War of Independence. Their relationship faces immediate opposition from Tacettin's family, but the couple stays together, and Patricia gives birth to a son, Ali.

As the War of Independence unfolds, tensions between the town's Greek and Muslim communities harden, and the compulsory population exchange negotiated before the Treaty of Lausanne — which uprooted roughly a million and a half people along religious lines — separates Patricia, her mother, and three-year-old Ali from Tacettin, sending them to Greece.

Spanning decades and generations, the novel follows the long aftermath of that separation: a family split by a border neither side chose, and a longing that outlasts the historical moment that caused it. Canan Tan grounds the story in the real history of the Greek-Turkish population exchange, using one family's loss to stand in for the much larger, largely unspoken cost the exchange imposed on both peoples.