What Remains

One of the most influential Turkish writers of the 20th century, Leylâ Erbil was an innovative literary stylist who tackled issues at the heart of what it means to be human, in mind and body. Erbil ventured where few writers dared to tread, turning her lens to the tides of social norms and the shaping of identities, focusing intently on emotional conflict, and plumbing the depths of history and psyche. In 2002 and 2004 Erbil was nominated as a candidate for the Nobel Prize for Literature by Turkey PEN. She died in Istanbul in 2013.Ayten Tartici is a Turkish-born, New York-based writer. Her essays have appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, Slate and The Yale Review, among other venues. She holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from Yale University, where she was awarded the John Addison Porter prize for best scholarship university-wide. She was selected as an American Council of Learned Societies Emerging Voices Postdoctoral Fellow at Georgetown and has taught literature at Columbia University. She is a 2025-2026 Writer-in-Residence at the James Merrill House, where she is working on a memoir that blends in cultural criticism.

“Erbil is a chronicler of the cracks, of what disrupts a sense of wholeness and cohesion… At the heart of the book is a dirge for what has been lost in the formation of the Turkish state and its accompanying nationalism.” —Asymptote Magazine“How odd that a writer who first started making her mark in 1956 should remain a pioneer still today . . . How odd that, even after half a century, no writer capable of surpassing her has yet appeared.” —Mahmut Temizyürek, poet and literary critic“Leylâ Erbil is a consummate literary artist.” —Turkish National Committee for UNESCO