Journey to the Edge of Life

A writer finds solitude and salvation tracing the lives and deaths of three of her literary lights in a haunted and lyrical travelogue from NBCC Award-winner Tezer Özlü.

An unnamed writer embarks on an obsessive journey through Europe, drawn to the gravesites of her literary idols — Cesare Pavese, Italo Svevo, Franz Kafka — putting her life, her writing, and her politics in conversation with theirs.

Untethered and spirit-like herself, she moves among European cities: Berlin, Hamburg, Prague, Vienna, Zagreb, and Belgrade. At times there are companions — lovers and others — but she remains steadfast in her solitude. As she is uncannily drawn to Pavese’s suicide, her journey transmutes passion for literature into desire for meaning.

Occupying a liminal space between past and present, life and death, Journey to the Edge of Life is a deeply inquisitive, atmospheric, and rebellious novel that shows what such a journey can mean for a woman who has spent her life within the confines established by others.