Fiction

Disquiet

2017

Bestselling novel of 2017

Disquiet (2017)

Mercy is not an ointment for cruelty.

Disquiet transports the reader to the contemporary Middle East with a love story set against the recent atrocities committed by ISIS against the Yazidi people. Both a meditation on the nature of being human and an empathetic, probing look at the past and present reality of these lands of the Mesopotamian heritage, Disquiet is the groundbreaking first novel to tell of the experiences of the Yazidis fleeing ISIS to take refuge in Turkey.

Through the stories of Hussein from Mardin and the Yazidi girl, Meleknaz from Iraq, Disquiet gives a voice to the peoples, faiths, histories, and stories that have swept through this region over centuries.

Sales850,000 copies sold in Turkey

Praise

“A wonderful narrative. I enjoyed reading Disquiet very much.”
Pascal Bruckner, French writer and philosopher

“Livaneli imagines humanity as a union of the past and present, the human and the inhumane, of love and hate, of cruelty and compassion.”
Prof. Onur Bilge Kula, Cumhuriyet Literary Supplement

“Perhaps none of these books dwells more on futility than Zülfü Livaneli's seductive noir, Disquiet.”
Michael Lapointe, The Times Literary Supplement