Stone and Shadow: A Novel [Paperback]

Longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award

This gorgeous, haunting saga tells the story of modern Turkey and its diverse communities through the life of a gravestone maker.

In the city of Mardin, near Turkey’s border with Syria, the orphaned Avdo finds purpose when an old mason takes him on as an apprentice. From Master Josef, he learns the importance of their art, which looks after the dead and bears witness to their lives. Avdo then travels the country and meets a woman he loves wholeheartedly, only to lose her through a tragic crime. Resigned to a lonely existence, he retreats from the world into his cemetery workshop, but even there, life, with all its sorrows, joys, injustices, and gifts, draws him in unexpected directions.
    An intimate, indelible epic, Stone and Shadow melds fragments not only from twentieth-century Turkish history, but also from the Ottoman Empire, the wider Middle East, and Europe. Together they form a breathtaking picture of a rich, complex society that encompasses Christians, Sunni Muslims, Alawites, Turks, Kurds, and Armenians.“[An] expansive, dreamy, richly allusive novel…An enthralling, multidimensional epic from a leading figure on fiction’s world stage.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Following the enchanting and heartbreaking life of a gravestone cutter, Sönmez masterfully deploys the unique historical condition of modern Turkey to plumb the depths of identity and memory, asking what treasures are lost and what political conveniences are gained by the act of collective forgetting. With this book, he has eroded the boundaries of epochs, lands, languages, and even bodies, collapsing time into a beguiling and provocative coil. These freighted characters are a resounding blӖ