Even when I try to take a break from trauma, it finds me anyways. Kaygusuz explores beautifully the spaces separating the silence of the survivors from the unanswered questions of those who although never experienced them, carry these tragedies within themselves. The novel was inspired by the real life story of Kaygusuz´s grandmother who survived the Dersim massacre of Alevi Kurds in 1938. It is a piece of history I had absolutely no knowledge of, but the writer´s purpose wasn´t to recount the horrors themselves, but explore its after-effects for a generation only familiar with it through stories of others. She uses the faith of her grandmother (focused on the elusive figure of Hizir) as well as a number of folk tales to guide the reader and to try to capture the inexplicable. She writes in a wonderfully anachronistic and poetic languages, that albeit sometimes appears a little inaccessible, only confirms the assumption, that these experiences can only be approximated, but never really named.