Perhat Tursun – författare

Dimman blev allt tätare. Jag stirrade stint på människosiluetterna i diset. Vissa, som var klädda i vitt och stod en eller två meter bort, flimrade som spegelbilder i smutsigt rinnande vatten ...En ensam man vandrar runt i Ürümqi i jakt på en plats där han kan tillbringa natten. Medan han går tänker han tillbaka på sitt liv och på de traumatiska händelser som format honom. Dimman som omvärver honom förstärker hans känsla av alienation och får tankarna att rusa. Perhat Tursun är uigurisk författare och poet, känd för sina både språkligt och tematiskt kontroversiella dikter och romaner. Han greps 2018 och dömdes till 16 års fängelse. 2022 tilldelades han Tucholskypriset av Svenska PEN "för sin starka röst för fri litteratur, oavsett kulturella tabun eller etniskt-politiskt förtryck, som på ett självklart och djupt berörande sätt gestaltar mänsklig erfarenhet ur ett minoritetsperspektiv".Boken ges ut i samarbete med Svenska PEN.

The Backstreets is an astonishing novel by a preeminent contemporary Uyghur author who was disappeared by the Chinese state. It follows an unnamed Uyghur man who comes to the impenetrable Chinese capital of Xinjiang after finding a temporary job in a government office. Seeking to escape the pain and poverty of the countryside, he finds only cold stares and rejection. He wanders the streets, accompanied by the bitter fog of winter pollution, reciting a monologue of numbers and odors, lust and loathing, memories and madness.Perhat Tursun’s novel is a work of untrammeled literary creativity. His evocative prose recalls a vast array of canonical world writers—contemporary Chinese authors such as Mo Yan; the modernist images and rhythms of Camus, Dostoevsky, and Kafka; the serious yet absurdist dissection of the logic of racism in Ellison’s Invisible Man—while drawing deeply on Uyghur literary traditions and Sufi poetics and combining all these disparate influences into a style that is distinctly Perhat Tursun’s own. The Backstreets is a stark fable about urban isolation and social violence, dehumanization and the racialization of ethnicity. Yet its protagonist’s vivid recollections of maternal tenderness and first love reveal how memory and imagination offer profound forms of resilience. A translator’s introduction situates the novel in the political atmosphere that led to the disappearance of both the author and his work.

The Backstreets is an astonishing novel by a preeminent contemporary Uyghur author who was disappeared by the Chinese state. It follows an unnamed Uyghur man who comes to the impenetrable Chinese capital of Xinjiang after finding a temporary job in a government office. Seeking to escape the pain and poverty of the countryside, he finds only cold stares and rejection. He wanders the streets, accompanied by the bitter fog of winter pollution, reciting a monologue of numbers and odors, lust and loathing, memories and madness.Perhat Tursun’s novel is a work of untrammeled literary creativity. His evocative prose recalls a vast array of canonical world writers—contemporary Chinese authors such as Mo Yan; the modernist images and rhythms of Camus, Dostoevsky, and Kafka; the serious yet absurdist dissection of the logic of racism in Ellison’s Invisible Man—while drawing deeply on Uyghur literary traditions and Sufi poetics and combining all these disparate influences into a style that is distinctly Perhat Tursun’s own. The Backstreets is a stark fable about urban isolation and social violence, dehumanization and the racialization of ethnicity. Yet its protagonist’s vivid recollections of maternal tenderness and first love reveal how memory and imagination offer profound forms of resilience. A translator’s introduction situates the novel in the political atmosphere that led to the disappearance of both the author and his work.