Cold Nights of Childhood

By Tezer Özlü and Maureen Freely

The narrator of Cold Nights of Childhood grows up in a rapidly changing Turkey, where the atmosphere is nationalist, patriarchal, technocratic. As a misfit in search of freedom, love and happiness, she escapes to Berlin, is overcome by depression on her return, and trapped in a psychiatry clinic for five years. After electroshock therapy and inhumane treatment, she is released into the care of friends and family, making tentative steps in a halting journey towards recovery.

In her unique, unstructured style, Tezer Özlü explores the extremity of her inner life and the painful pleasures of memory. Translated into English for the first time by Maureen Freely, this novel is a classic akin to The Bell Jar and Good Morning, Midnight.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Serpent's Tail
• Release date: Feb 2, 2023
• ISBN: 9781782838821

Tezer Özlü

Tezer Özlü was born in 1943 in Turkey and lived in Paris, Ankara, Istanbul, Berlin, and Zurich, where she died in 1986. Cold Nights of Childhood is her first novel to be translated into English.