Sevgili Arsız Ölüm ovvero l’Istanbul “periferica” di Latife Tekin

Abstract

The article examines Sevgili Arsiz Olum (1983; Dear Shameless Death , 2001), the first novel by Latife Tekin. Considered one of the most original Turkish woman novelists, Tekin distinguished her writing in the 1980s by a specific representation of Istanbul and its cityscapes. I will illustrate how this novel was both aesthetically and politically conceived to reproduce the alienation of Anatolian rural migrants from an urban space and culture and their “peripheral” perspective on the city. I will focus on Tekin’s strategies of representing the city from women migrants’ points of view as a locus of feminine subordination, exclusion and alienation, both economically and morally, from urban space.