Since there was no pier where it could dock, the fishing boat left us in water that came to our chests, and we carried our tent, food, and clothes to land by going back and forth between the boat and the shore. We thanked the kindhearted fisherman who had brought us here for only fuel money and said goodbye until we would see him next week. Then we sat on the shore waving as we watched the blue-green fishing boat disappear into the distance.

  As we walked toward the tree line to set up our tent, we were startled by a male voice calling “Welcome!” My heart leapt to say “Writer” before I even saw the man. But it wasn’t him. Two men and three women were approaching us from the depths of the forest. We had never expected this. We were astonished and couldn’t understand how these young people came to be here. They shook our hands, offered us water from a flask, and then asked who we were. It was their turn to get excited when we said we were two of the original inhabitants of the island. They hadn’t heard we had been released from prison, so it was hard to believe they had suddenly come across us on the island. Then we asked them who they were. They said, we will tell you, but rest first. They gathered our things and took us into the scorched forest. As we entered, we saw that some trees were quite green, and the green plants covering the ground provided coolness and moisture, even though there was little shade. We admired how nature repairs itself, but our next sight a little farther on would increase our joy a thousandfold: Our house was in front of us. It was the same house, with its veranda, roof, doors, windows. Lara and I looked at each other. How was this possible? Were we dreaming?

  A girl brought cold water and sat us on the veranda before telling us everything we were curious to know. We were amazed as we listened, and listened as we were amazed. Apparently, while we were being tried for the crime of killing the dictator, the case was written about daily in the country’s papers and reported on television. Our pictures were featured. They said we had established an indecent, illegal, immoral way of life on the island, and that when the state intervened, we killed the President and set the island on fire. Of course, they convinced a majority of the people, who were under the influence of the press. Everyone was cursing us, except for some of the youth. They never believed what they were told, because they knew there was a game behind every news story the government and the press spread. They searched for the truth for a long time, and this led them to see us as heroes and legends, especially Lara and the grocer’s son, who even appeared on posters with revolutionary slogans. Finally, as a volunteer movement, they decided to make the island green again, and turn it into a symbol of freedom and resistance. Nine friends came here and built this house according to a plan they drew from some of the half-burned houses. As before, they arranged stones and planted jasmine, geraniums, and saplings around it, and the saplings had already started to grow.

  This small scene affected us so deeply after the long years in prison and so much sadness and anxiety that Lara, tough as she was, had tears in her eyes. It was like a dream; we couldn’t believe it. The young people were staring at us with admiration, without believing it. They even apologized for not recognizing us at first. Seagulls were circling in the sky, the sea was taking on the delicious colors of the sunset, from dark blue to purple, purple to pink, and the beautiful scents in the gentle breeze were reinvigorating us. Yes, we believed now. We were going to rebuild our island. The dictator who had done so much damage had lost.

  There was only one question left. We were afraid of the answer but needed to ask.

  “The Writer,” I said. “Have you seen him?”

  After such good news, I had an unrealistic hope.

  Lara was staring straight ahead.

  The young people looked at each other for a while without speaking. Then a long-haired girl said, “Every revolution demands sacrifices,” and fell silent.

  We asked nothing more.

  THE LAST ISLAND DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

  1. Most characters in the novel are named for a singular attribute: their house number or their profession. What is the significance of this? Why do you think Lara is called by her given name?

  2. How does the writer-narrator of the novel relate to the character known as “the Writer”? What do these two representations—the writer as passive observer vs. the writer as active/activist—say about the power (or the impotence) of writing?

  3. On this page, the narrator thinks to himself, “So. This is [the President’s] nature then—the nature of a shark.” Discuss the use of animal metaphors in the novel. What do these metaphors suggest about the relationship between a person’s “nature” and personal responsibility? How are different characters either excused or held accountable for actions arising from their “nature”? What animal would you use to describe your nature?

  4. Discuss the increasingly violent encounters between the islanders and the seagulls. Is a provoked minority culpable for a violent reaction to a clear aggression?

  5. Which character’s response and perspective do you most identify with? What would your reaction be if you were a resident of the Island?

  6. What does the novel suggest about the possibility of utopia? Do you think it’s possible to create an ideal society, or will any attempt inevitably be corrupted?

  7. What does the epilogue suggest about the transmission of culture and ideology from generation to generation? In what ways are these traditions ruptured? In what ways are they perpetuated?

  Q&A WITH AUTHOR ZÜLFÜ LIVANELI ON THE LAST ISLAND

  O: The narrator of The Last Island nicknames this place “Isle of Angels” (4). What he describes is almost a utopia: “Everyone simply did as much as they could, or felt like doing” (119). This doesn’t last long, however, and what begins in the novel as a utopia turns into a complete dystopia. If we extrapolate the Island to the Earth, do you think this is universal and inevitable?

  ZL: The Last Island is perhaps my most political novel, although it doesn’t describe a particular country. I preferred to write what I think about Turkey and the world through the lens of people living on a remote island, seagulls, and a dictator. Because I thought that I could tell the truth—which has been lost and overlooked among millions of news details—more easily by isolating it. People find it difficult to distinguish truth from falsehood when they’re being bombarded with targeted news. In any case, large groups of people forget the past; they don’t think about the future, they only live in the moment. This “moment” is often misinterpreted, as it is shaped by the manipulations of governments and the media.

  Q: In the novel, the President begins to save the island society from “anarchy” by ordering the trees on the wooded path “pruned, cleared out, and fixed up in keeping with park and garden traditions” (48), which brings to mind common misconceptions of green space by local governments and the events of Gezi Park, albeit indirectly. Once again life seems to imitate art! As a writer and artist known to be mindful of the environment, what would you say?

  ZL: I’ve become more and more convinced that life imitates art. Indeed, The Last Island, which was published years before the Gezi resistance, seems to overlap with it. So when you manage to look at life accurately, you can pass into a dimension outside of time and space through art. World and Turkish literature are full of many similar examples. It is the job of journalism to relate the events of Gezi immediately, sociology to interpret them after the fact, and art to represent them with predictions informed by history.

  Q: The President starts to rule the Island with the help of “committees.” This development doesn’t attract much attention at first, and gives no hint as to how serious things would turn out to be: “it was all theater, nothing more” (63). Every fascist government’s future victims watch its first acts as they would a game. Can we say that these performances are still staged today?

  ZL: Every dictatorship is careful, in the beginning, to present its own interest as the interest of society. It tries not to scare anyone. Then, as its strength and confidence grow, it gradually starts to show its teeth. Of course, this characterization is valid not for violent upheavals like the French Revolution, but for “elected kings” who rise to power through supposedly “democratic” means.

  Q: One of the novel’s most important messages is that fascism may well be a majority power that takes hold through democratic means. Connected to this is the fact that democracy can actually be a deceptive concept, with very painful consequences: “all the decisions made on this island were carried out democratically. We carried out whatever the majority vote resulted in” (283). A familiar voice right here [in Turkey] says, “The majority is right!” So, what do you think?

  ZL: In the seventies, the Cumhuriyet newspaper conducted interviews with the condition that responses must be brief. In one such interview, I defined democracy as “dictatorship of the majority,” and this concept generated a lot of discussion. At that time, the word “democracy” was highly exalted, and many people didn’t like my definition. However, this is how the French sociologist Maurice Duverger defines democracy. Of course, this definition describes a cruel game played behind a mask, and not true, ideal democracy. For a regime to be democratic in the full sense of the word, it must be based on pluralism, not the majority, and it must fully implement the separation of powers. Now these concepts have become better understood with the painful experiences we’re living. For example, who can control the government in a regime where the judiciary has become pathetic!

  Q: The dictator’s dilemma is that he undermines himself with the repressive methods he uses to maintain his rule—unintentionally, of course, or almost unintentionally, with an “armed propaganda” approach: “What was happening to us had taken us by such surprise that we couldn’t think straight. But we were well aware of one thing: it never occurred to us to be angry with the seagulls. On the contrary, the hatred we felt toward the President had only increased for causing all of this in the first place” (174). Did you dwell on this connection while writing?

  ZL: The power game inevitably results in the players being poisoned by power. Dictators make the mistake of assuming they can “set the course” by relying on the armed people under their command. History, however, is full of examples that show this isn’t possible. Every dictator—like Mussolini—is hung by his feet, continues to struggle until this symbolic hanging. While I was writing the novel, I had military dictatorships and the Kurdish question (seagulls) in mind, but later on, other connections emerged. It was strange, as though someone who has read the novel were trying to apply it to the real world.

  Q: The novel ends with hope for the future in a dark place where everyone has lost except the seagulls, who won “because they had taken a stand and fought instead of compromising,” and the narrator laments, “We should have started speaking out and rebelling back when the trees were pared away and the grocer’s innocent son was beaten” (288). As the Writer says, “wherever there’s evil, everyone there is partly to blame for it” (168). Now that we’ve started to talk about the “Gezi Spirit,” has your hope increased a little bit?

  ZL: I agree with these statements. Anyone who doesn’t stand up to evil as it looms becomes part of the crime. It’s necessary to say no to dictatorships that “slowly” gain ground. Rebels are noble for that. Yes, the seagulls win because they resist. The novel focuses on the fact that society and nature will find, or rather must find, their balance. If you try to interfere with these balances, the result is disastrous; both nature and human beings are destroyed. This murder is sometimes committed openly in the form of a dictatorship, sometimes hidden behind the deception of “democracy”—the will of a single person, boards, assemblies, commissions, etc. But they’re all distractions. Decisions come from one person. That one person, however, degenerates over time with power, beginning to believe that God created him to rule the world, and trying to dominate nature and society. He even sees this as his most natural right, gets angry—genuinely angry—with those who oppose it. He interprets society raising its voice as “the feet becoming the head.” Honestly, I was more hopeless while writing the novel, but the Gezi resistance blew my mind, as it did many others’. This unorganized, spontaneous movement seemed to me to be proof that humankind is inexhaustible. I’m glad to have had the chance to live through those historic days together with young friends. By adding an epilogue to the novel, I wanted to send a salute to the resisting youth.

  ZÜLFÜ LIVANELI is Turkey’s best-selling author and a political activist. Widely considered one of the most important Turkish cultural figures of our time, he is known for his novels that interweave diverse social and historical backgrounds, figures, and incidents, including the critically acclaimed Bliss (winner of the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award), Serenade for Nadia (Other Press, 2020), Disquiet (Other Press, 2021), Leyla’s House, and My Brother’s Story, which have been translated into thirty-seven languages, won numerous international literary prizes, and been turned into movies, stage plays, and operas.

  AYŞE A. ŞAHIN is a Turkish-American translator and bilingual language educator based in Istanbul. To learn more about her work, visit ayseaydansahin.com.

 

 

  Zülfü Livaneli, The Last Island

 

 

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