What is an Actor After All?
Aras Publishing, October 2017, Istanbul
Interview, 240 pages, Turkish
ISBN 9786052100004
Kevork Malikyan’s life journey took him from his native city of Diyarbakir to a boarding school in Istanbul, then on to the theatre stages of London and the film sets of Hollywood. Leaving theological studies behind, he followed a path that led from acting school to stage and screen, placing his craft at the heart of his life. What Is an Actor, After All? is the story of meeting whatever life brings with generosity and courage, and of trying to find one’s own path.
Kazim of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Estragon of Waiting for Godot, and Max of Mind Your Language, tells his extraordinary life story. Through a conversation shaped by photographs and diaries, Tuğba Esen portrays an actor who never hesitated to devote himself to the flow of life and to performance rather than rigid career plans, who always carried her Armenian identity with him, and who was constantly “reminded” of who he was.
Doğan Akhanlı, 2024, Sankofa. First edition was published by Sujet Verlag in German, with the translation of Recai Hallaç.
Editing: Tuğba Esen
In the 1970s, the writer Tayfun Kara is sentenced to death for a crime he did not commit. By digging an 85-metre-long tunnel, he manages to escape from his prison cell in Istanbul and flees to Germany. His story encourages the army official, who was hunting him, to change his life and leave Turkey behind as well. Decades later, fate brings them together again in Cologne.
In his final major novel, Doğan Akhanlı (1957–2021) recounts cruel crimes, power, and violence against the backdrop of German and Turkish history over the past fifty years. At the same time, Sankofa is a story of hope and of the tireless effort to learn from the horrors of the past so that they are not repeated.
In a world that struggles to think beyond national or group-based perspectives, books like this are more important than ever.