Motherland Hotel

"My heroes are Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar, Oguz Atay, and Yusuf Atilgan. I have become a novelist by following their footsteps. . . . I love Yusuf Atilgan; he manages to remain local although he benefits from Faulkner's works and the Western traditions."Orhan Pamuk

Zebercet, the last surviving member of a once prosperous Ottoman family, is the owner of the Motherland Hotel, a rundown establishment in a remote Anatolian village. A lonely, middle-aged introvert, his simple life is structured by daily administrative tasks and regular, routine sex with the hotel's maid. One day, a beautiful woman from the capital comes to spend the night, promising to return "next week," and suddenly Zerbecet's insular, mechanical existence is dramatically and irrevocably changed. The mysterious woman's presence has tantalized him, and he begins to live his days in fevered anticipation of her return. But the week passes, and then another, and as his fantasies become more and more obsessive, Zerbecet gradually loses his grip on reality.

Motherland Hotel was hailed as the novel of the year when it was published in 1973, astonishing critics with its experimental style, its intense psychological depth and its audacious description of sexual obsession. Zerbecet was compared to such memorable characters as Quentin Compson in Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury and Meursault in Albert Camus'The Stranger. While author Yusuf Atilgan had already achieved considerable literary fame,Motherland Hotel cemented his reputation as one of Turkey's premier modernists.