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Nazli Koca

The Applicant

The Applicant

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  • Condition: Brand new
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  • More about The Applicant


Elif Batuman's novel The Applicant is a 2017 novel that follows Leyla, a left-wing Turkish twenty-something living in Berlin, who is on the verge of losing her student visa and being forced to return to Istanbul. She meets a right-wing Swedish tourist and begins to fall in love, but must decide whether to live a cookie-cutter life or return to Turkey. The novel explores the bounds of state violence, self-destruction, social dissociation, and intense familial love.

Format: Hardback
Length: 256 pages
Publication date: 03 August 2023
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group


Elif Batuman is a significant and innovative new literary voice. In 2017, Leyla, a left-wing Turkish twenty-something residing in Berlin, is working at an Alice in Wonderland-themed hostel to make ends meet while she waits for a decision on her visa status. She is on the verge of losing her student visa and being forced to return to Istanbul, a city she thought she had left behind for good.

As her temporary visa expires, Leyla meets a right-wing Swedish tourist at a bar and, against her political convictions and better judgment, begins to fall in love. Will she choose to live a cookie-cutter life as the wife of a Volvo salesman, or will she return to Turkey to her mother and sister, codependent and enmeshed, the ghost of her father still haunting their lives?

Koca is written in wry, propulsive diary form and with probing self-reflection, exploring one's place in a deeply uncertain world. It examines the boundaries of state violence and self-destruction, social dissociation, and intense familial love.

The Applicant is a stunning dissection of a liminal life lived between borders and identities.

Weight: 368g
Dimension: 146 x 224 x 26 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781472158109

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