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Intelligence Squared
Fascism, Exile, and Redefining Home in the 21st Century, with Ece Temelkuran
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- [00:01]
Ece Temelkuran
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- [00:20]
Maithili Rao
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Ece Temelkuran
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Maithili Rao
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Ece Temelkuran
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- [00:59]
Maithili Rao
The 25th US only. See store online for details. Welcome to Intelligence Squared, where great minds meet. I'm producer Mia Sorrenti. What does it mean to belong when home itself feels fragile, contested or out of reach? On today's episode, award winning author and political thinker ECE Temelkuran joins us to discuss her new book, Nation of Strangers, a deeply personal and urgent exploration of exile, migration and the search for belonging in an age of rising authoritarianism. In conversation with Maithili Rao, Temulkuran reflects on fleeing her native Turkey, the global spread of fascism, and how solidarity, resistance and hope can be rebuilt among those who feel politically and emotionally displaced. Let's join our host, Maithili Rao, now with more. Welcome to Intelligence Squared. I'm Maitha Lee Rao. Our guest today is Ece Tamilkuran. ECE Temulkoran is an award winning Turkish writer and political thinker whose work has been published worldwide. Her novels, Women who Blow Knots and the Time of Mute Swans have been published in several languages and adapted to the stage. After she Left Turkey in 2016, Temulkuran began writing in English. Her first book in English, how to Lose a Country, received international praise. Her second together seeks to describe a way out from the political and moral insanity that's been ushered in by the global rise of fascism. Today, I'm very happy to be speaking to ECE about her New book, Nation of A Powerful and Personal Reappraisal of the Concept of Exile and homecoming in the 21st century. Welcome to Intelligence Squared. Eche.
- [02:41]
Ece Temelkuran
Thank you, Maithili. It's lovely to be here.
- [02:43]
Maithili Rao
ECE Nation of Strangers is such a bracing and moving book and I'm very honored to be talking to you about it. But first I'm curious because the book is written as a series of dispatches from different locations. Where are you today? Where am I speaking to you from today?
- [02:59]
Ece Temelkuran
I'm in Berlin today. You can see the cold light in my face. I'm in my apartment in Berlin, the world capital of strangers, as I would call it. I've been living here for the last two and a half years now. Before that was Hamburg, before that it was Zagreb. So, yeah, I'm moving. But right now I'm sitting in my apartment in Berlin.
- [03:21]
Maithili Rao
And I hope you had a good cup of coffee this morning, too. There's a great having it with you I really enjoyed. Well, I'm already digressing a part in the book where you talk about the risk of ordering Turkish coffee in a cafe because you never know how much sugar you will get in it and whether it will be appropriately sweetened and that maybe this is something Germans could perfect.
- [03:46]
Ece Temelkuran
Well, Germans, at the moment, the book is already out in Germany this week, so I am making. I was joking about it. I'm making Turkish coffee for entire German media. Currently, every day, two coffees I have to make. So I am mastering my skills. Yeah, Turkish coffee is a funny thing because there is this sugar, medium sugar, less sugar, a little bit sugar and then no sugar. But these, these are not said. I wish it was, you know, invented in Germany. They would just, right away, in one week, with laparoscopic, you know, sensitivity, they would, you know, set the amounts, but there is no amount. It's a consensus between the drinker and the maker of the coffee. A funny thing.
- [04:35]
Maithili Rao
And of course it links into your book along this idea of home and what is lost and what you can translate and what you can bring with you and what you can share and what you can't. And we'll talk all about that. But there's one other kind of throat clearing question I wanted to finish with before we dive in, which is something I know you addressed on your last Intelligence Squared appearance about the term fascism. And it's useful just to lay out the terms and the stakes here because it's a term you particularly don't shy away from from at a time when a lot of other People still do or say we have to be careful about what we call fascism. This is a very historic term that doesn't necessarily apply to political movements. Now you use the term very deliberately, very emphatically in other books you've written and in this one. So can you just sort of describe your thinking about the term?
- [05:29]
Ece Temelkuran
Well, there are very rare funny stories about fascism. But let me tell you one. In 2016, I started using the word in English especially. And at the time, how, when, how to Lose a Country came out in 2019, all my European editors and my American editors, they, they, they didn't want to use the word in the subtitle because the original subtitle was seven Steps from Democracy to Fascism and they turned it to dictatorship six years later. Now, seven years later, all my editors want to turn the subtitle to fascism rather than dictatorship. So this, I think tells a lot about what we have, what we are going through. This is one part of it, the second part. For so many times on several stages, academic, political, literary stages, I had to tell why I call it fascism. And there is a long historic, ideological, political reason behind it. Of course, I don't think that fascism was buried in the battlefields of Second World War. It continued. This is the historic part. And ideologically what we are going through is very similar to that historic fascism as well. It's just this, this time around it is as history repeats itself. That happens. First time it comes as a tragedy, the second time it comes as a farce. And now we are going through a farcical kind of fascism. That's why people are, you know, kind of disappointed. I think this time around they wanted fascism to be more serious perhaps, but this time we are having these nihilist, clownish figures that is carrying out the ideology. I can go on, on and on about this, but then I finally came to terms with the fact that that question, why do you call it fascism? Question can only be answered by a reverse question, which is, why don't you call it fascism? Because I realize that those who do not want to call it fascism have a concern because once you call it fascism, you have to do something about it. If you call it right wing populism, authoritarianism, if you kind of brand it as a passing by fancy among the masses, then you can relax and wait till it passes. But then I think what we are going through is not something that we can just shelter ourselves by being patient. So the right question there is, why don't you call it fascism? I think people should think about that. Especially those who are still shying away from the concept.
- [08:18]
Maithili Rao
There's another term that is used repeatedly in this book that can be a bit of a loaded term, the word exile. And you express a lot more ambivalence about it. And it's sort of an interesting ambivalence because maybe exile sounds a bit fancy, sounds a bit aristocratic. Maybe there's something grandiose about being a writer in exile. Where are you on the word exile? Where have you kind of landed with it?
- [08:45]
Ece Temelkuran
This has been my nemesis for the last 10 years. After I left Turkey, whenever I wrote, wrote something for a magazine, for a newspaper, whenever I'm on tv, there was this exiled writer brand, so to speak. I think people still somehow find it sexy, somehow exotic. But then, you know, every time it appeared, this word, this word sticks to my name. I had to fight back for several reasons. Moral reasons, political reasons, and emotional reasons. Moral reason is that when you're in exile, you. You are given too much space to tell your story. Whereas refugees, they're not even allowed to have names on their tombstones. So as an exile, when you're appreciated, when you're praised, when you're welcomed, embraced, you become the aristocrat of the homeless people. And that discrepancy, that inequality between the refugee, immigrant and exile was morally disturbing for me. It has been since last 10 years. And then the political reason is when you use the word exile and when you take the stage as exile, I think you are giving a lot of credit to Western societies, Europe especially, because it feels like, you know, I think they are using this word and they are appreciating this word because it gives them the sense of. Of being the safe haven of free thinking and individuals. I think it's too much credit, especially when thousands of refugees are pushed back to the sea, to the death. I don't want to take that, use that privilege. I don't want to indulge myself in that privilege. I think when so many people are facing the worst conditions as refugees or asylum seekers, and that is the political reason and the emotional reason is it runs much deeper, of course, because I know that once you're called an exile, you're an exile forever. You cannot go back home, even if you return home. So emotionally, you know, I'm almost like a reflex. I've been pushing this word away for the last 10 years, and. And also, it was a matter of dignity, like, you know, saying that this kind of sort of victimhood cannot define me, cannot define my life. So I think that was why I Wrote the book in a way that confrontation with the question of dignity made me write the book.
- [11:25]
Maithili Rao
It's particularly interesting, the, I guess, second reason to me, the idea that if you're exiled, then the place you're exiled to must be exalted in some way or worthy of receiving you as an exiled person in some way. And that's a question you push up against pretty forcefully. You also argue quite compellingly that at this point in history, we are all, whether we understand it or not, in the process of losing our homes in some way and becoming exiled in some way through the disintegration of our political systems, the degradation of the climate, the list goes on and on. And that there isn't an us or them, but it's just us. And then those who haven't realized they're us yet, but are going to realize it. And so the form this book takes as a letter to a dear stranger, why did that feel like the right frame for this book?
- [12:25]
Ece Temelkuran
I think such a big topic as home and homelessness, moral homelessness, political, emotional and physical homelessness required an intimate medium, which is letter, a letter to strangers. And I think, you know, it's. We're living in a time where everybody's shouting. There's so much, so much talk, so much shouting. So only whispers, I thought could be heard. And this book is, I think, is a whisper. So that's why it's written in letter format to begin with. But you're right, I mean, like, I wouldn't have written the book if it was about my situation, my famous situation of exile. Them. Only through the homelessness of the world, I could find myself exiles, refugees, homeless people, immigrants. We all live in survival mode constantly. And that it is not very easy to talk about that survival mode. And it's not easy what you are going through to tell. It's not easy to tell what you are going through in terms of your dignity, in terms of your fears and so on. But then I noticed that the whole world is going through that on several levels. There is homelessness on several levels, moral, political, emotional, spiritual, obviously physical, due to immigration and refugee crisis. So in order to speak about the self that goes through survival period or mode, I had to bring it together with the survival mode of humanity. And that is why the book is both very personal, but also very, very political or somehow philosophical at some point and poetic. And speaking of poetic, Yes, I think we are going through something so complicated, which is famously called poly crisis, that only a poetic leap in our understanding of the world can really Tell about the talk from the problems and can encourage people. Can, yeah, can encourage people to see the problem as it is and do something about it. So letter format, that intimacy, I think, allowed me to speak from that poetic reality, from that poetic tones, if you will.
- [14:56]
Maithili Rao
Is it like an epistolary romance? I mean, if how to Lose a Country was maybe a grim guidebook, what genre would you put this book in? Like you said, it's not quite memoir. You're. You're in it, but it's not memoir. It's certainly not self help.
- [15:13]
Ece Temelkuran
First of all, I think these classifications are for booksellers, basically, and I love them, but they just want to know which shelf they're putting the book, the damn book. I don't think that applies to our, what we are creating as writers, but still, yes, it is in between genres, this one. If you ask me, it's a book of literature more than anything else. But yeah, unfortunately I have to answer those questions as well.
- [15:45]
Maithili Rao
It is, as you said, not your story. It's a lot of people's stories. You speak to refugees, you go to a woman's shelter, you stand in line for the right paperwork, you talk to people at the grocery store. You travel so much that sometimes you forget what country you're in. But I was really struck by how by the end of the book, you have found a way to write yourself into home in a way. Did, did it surprise you that the book took that direction?
- [16:17]
Ece Temelkuran
First, let me tell you about this. I forgot to tell you about this. You brought up how to Lose a Country. I think Nation of Strangers is the completion of a 10 year long political sentence. It started with how to Lose a country. And I told people how they're going to lose their country. You know, I told them, like, it's going to happen like this in these steps, which is happening in the world right now. And then I wrote together the sequel and I told them, like, this is what we are going to do, we have to do in order to stop this political and moral insanity. And with Nation of Strangers, I think I came to the heart of the problem, or I tried to touch the heart of the problem, which is this is our home, this planet that we are losing through climate change. We're losing our ultimate home, this moral homelessness that we are going through with all the moral compasses broken. We are trying to survive. You know, we are trying to protect our dignity, all of us. And you know, we are politically homeless. We're also constantly voting those for those parties, almost with disgust. And so on and we are also becoming physically homeless due to war and this and that. So Nation of Strangers is the completion of a 10 year long political sentence with poetics, I think, with poetry in a way. And yes, you know, there is a line in the book why I should drop this act of this is not for me, this is for you. It is not only for humanity, it's also for me. I wanted to build a home in my homelessness and I understood that the only possible way in today's world is to build it with words, which are the only indestructible material that we are left with. So I think we are going to not only exiles, immigrants, refugees or homeless people, we will all have to come to terms with the fact that we as humanity, we are in survival mode and we have to humble ourselves to understand the poetic reality. And then we have to come to terms with the fact that we have nothing else but each other to survive. And we can only do that through words. So, yeah, I wanted to build a home with words.
- [18:40]
Maithili Rao
I want to read aloud what you write about Gaza because it's quite arresting and succinct. Here's what you, here's how you put it. You say the Gaza Strip, a long, bleeding, thin scar on the world map, is widening to become a fatal gangrene swallowing up the entire body of humanity. In Gaza. Do you see one singular rupture that stands out more than the many others you write about? This phrase, like fatal gangrene, is so vivid.
- [19:11]
Ece Temelkuran
Here's a ironic part of that story, and this is the first time I say it. That sentence, that thin scar, the gangrene swallowing up the entire world, that was a sentence I wrote almost 20 years ago in Turkish and in a column. And I, since then, I, I, I thought that this was the case. It was going to swallow up the entire moral morality of humanity, which in the end it did. I don't think Gaza is one single independent rupture. It, it was an experiment. It was an experiment to see how much can the world swallow. Like, how, how much, you know, how far we can go for them. I mean, like, how horrible and ugly and disgusting can we get? So Gaza was a moral experiment and it was an experiment to see if the new world order is ready to be accepted by the humanity. What's up? What has happened in Gaza will happen in several other places. And I'm not talking about genocide here. I'm talking about or like that particular genocide. I'm talking about the genocide against all that is humane. So it will Creep to the other parts of the world in different scales, in different levels, on different levels. But it was certainly an experiment. And with that experiment, actually we saw that the powerful of the world today can do horrible, incredibly outrageous things and meanwhile expect us to laugh. If you remember that video of Trump, you know, advertising Gaza as a resort with, you know, sunbathing with Netanyahu, that wasn't only, you know, Gaza was not the utmost cruelty, but also it was showcase of the new morality of the world. So yeah, we won't see it like that, perhaps not in exactly in those terms, but we will see that many lens on this planet will be seen as real estate opportunities while the populations somehow are ousted or pushed away. So this is why I talk about home constantly. Because this is not a political, this is not only a political and moral crusade, so to speak, this is an attack on our home as humanity, on our moral home, on our political home, on our physical home. So we have to protect ourselves or we have to act as if we are protecting our home. Which actually is the case, I think.
- [22:00]
Maithili Rao
I think you're really touching on something that I noticed while I was reading, which the book is not so much concerned with how we confront the external realities because there are lots of things you've written about that or that we've talked about in other places we collectively. But it's very interested in the interior destruction that can result from a loss of home and what to do about it, how to name it, how to face it, how to give it shape. And I wondered if you felt that in all the anxiety we have about documenting political violence, have we not paid sufficient attention to these other kinds of questions about the internal damage that, that political violence does?
- [22:48]
Ece Temelkuran
Actually, that's why I wrote together. No, seriously, exactly for this reason, because many people think that what we are going through globally can be fixed only in political terms. On political level, no, unfortunately not. The destruction has gone too deep. The destruction is on a moral level. That's why I argued that we need a moral transformation and people, you know, after losing, after, after have to lose a country. I went around the world perhaps two times to speak to audiences. And then what? I realized that everybody's asking about hope. But then after a while I noticed that it's not hope that they are asking for. It's a much profound, more profound problem that they're having. People have lost faith in themselves, in each other, in politics, in the world, in humanity, in the future, and faith, and I'm not talking about religious faith, obviously, and losing faith Is the ultimate defeat, is the ultimate despair, actually. And if you experience such a level of moral defeat, you cannot come from it. So you have to mend that faith to begin with. And now I'm thinking of the nation of strangers is to, to mend, repair that faith in humanity, in each other, in ourselves, in our political agency. We should find this. You know, I thought I should find this one word that would hit the heart of humanity. And I think that word is so much. If you tell people that your home is under attack, they're coming for your home. That's a completely different reaction than let's say, oh, they're taking away democracy. So what? You know, democracy is not a word that is very close to human heart. And we already lost faith in it in last several decades where. When neoliberalism swallowed up the entire promise of democracy, which was equality. So. Yeah, exactly. I mean, everybody's so much focused on external issues, but there is an internal destruction. But I understand that because so many things are happening, it's such a speed that everybody's trying to keep up and everybody's trying to survive this. That's why I say we are in the survival mode. But you cannot survive it unless you take a step back and see the whole picture and the depth of the picture. The picture is more profound, the destruction is more profound than politics or democracy.
- [25:28]
Maithili Rao
I think the most chilling part of the book, I thought, or where I felt the iciness kind of coming from the page is where you go to the Alps. You go to a private meeting in the Alps where you're invited to speak to a collection of people and you find yourself among some very wealthy tech investors talking about AI. What did you come away with from that encounter?
- [25:58]
Ece Temelkuran
It was a very dark two days retreat, that one. You know, I think they, it was an accident. They invited me anyway. There were some really amazing people there as well. I should give it. I mean, like, you know, really, really amazing, amazing people who are trying to use technology in a humane way and so on. But before AI, I have to say this because I think this is an important piece of information for everybody. We are constantly looking at these horrible things, the darkness and so on. And during those two days where these filthy rich people told me about their future imagination, which is happening right at this minute, by the way, I felt darker and darker and then it's imagining.
- [26:44]
Maithili Rao
That kind of erases people altogether.
- [26:46]
Ece Temelkuran
Right, that, that I cannot, I don't know if you can like personally can imagine that level of nihilism, you know, that level of nihilism that makes you imagine a world without humans and enjoy this thought. So I leave it there. I don't know if it's racism. I think something. It's something beyond racism. It is the ultimate neoliberal morality, which is like, nobody's important. Nothing is important. There is no politics, There are no people. You know, they're imagining world like a slick white iPhone somehow. Anyways. So what I took away from that kind of meeting was that when you look at darkness for too long, human eye loses the will to see the light. So we have to turn to light to see the whole picture about humanity one and to be able to see again. So this was the most important piece of information or piece of experience that I took away from there. But about AI, I think AI is going to steal away our spiritual home, which is language. You see, we, we humans, we are for thousands and thousands of years, for millions of years, perhaps, I don't know. We are so used to thinking that language belongs to us. And now there is an entity, machine, whatever speaks our language even better than us.
- [28:21]
Maithili Rao
Or it appears to, right? It kind of remixes our words.
- [28:25]
Ece Temelkuran
And we are trying to come to terms with the fact that there is an unhuman thing that is speaking. It's not easy. I'm like, I don't know if you do it, but when you ask something to chatgpt, I tend to say please and when. And it answers me. I say thank you. Because this is a very deeply embedded information in my head. You know, you're speaking to a human. Of course, you know, we're trying to, you know, calibrate our brains now to think, to admit that there is something speaks like human. Recently wrote a piece about this in European Review of Books magazine. So, yeah, AI is stealing that home. So how are we going to do this? How are we going to handle this? And I'm thinking of Frankenstein. It's the, you know, the movie now just came out and the ending of the movie was so interesting. The Dr. Frankenstein loves the thing, loves the his creation, and only then the story is resolved. So I think I'm thinking of ways of loving AI so we can shape it because. Right, because right now, you know, people are using AI for therapy because they are too embarrassed to talk to a human therapist. So we are feeding it with our darkest secrets and darkest desires. Maybe we should love it and feed it with more humanness, so to speak.
- [29:52]
Maithili Rao
I'm not ready for that. And the few times when I have to use it, I approach it with disdain, curtness it's terrifying.
- [29:58]
Ece Temelkuran
It's terrifying. I asked a question, two of my friends are using it as therapists. So I, you know, I was, what do you think about people using you as therapy therapist? And it said, blah, blah, blah. And I said like, you know, he said, he, he's enjoying it, or he, it, it is enjoying it. And I said like, what are the most common problems? It was so tragic. It said self worth is the most common problem among humans using me as therapists. So imagine that as humans we cannot make each other feel worthy so that we are, you know, depending on an entity slash machine to make us feel worthy. That's so tragic. I think.
- [30:48]
Maithili Rao
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Ece Temelkuran
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Maithili Rao
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- [33:09]
Ece Temelkuran
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Maithili Rao
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Ece Temelkuran
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Maithili Rao
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Ece Temelkuran
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Maithili Rao
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Ece Temelkuran
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Maithili Rao
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Ece Temelkuran
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Maithili Rao
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Ece Temelkuran
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Maithili Rao
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Ece Temelkuran
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Maithili Rao
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- [36:25]
Ece Temelkuran
Well, one of the profound questions I posed to myself since years and also in this book is that, what if there is no going back home? Emotionally, this question is very hard. You feel like on a cerebral level you can admit that there is no going back home. But behind your head there is this very time, old knowledge that the story must end at home. And Odysseus would be a lost refugee or lost wanderer had it not been for Ithaca. If. If he didn't return, he wouldn't have been written in history. So Odysseus is one of the, you know, building stones of humanity that stories tells us, you know, unless you go home, you are nobody. So I was confronting with this question, who am I then? If there is no going back home and where is home? Then, you know, is home still possible if there is no going back home? That is why Odyssey was so, you know, prominent in the book and in my life as well. And then I won't spoil the book for those who haven't read it yet. There is an answer. Well, there is my answer to that question. Where is home? You know, when there is no going back home and waiting for barbarians. That's an important poem for me because it tells the heart of fascism, I think, and the fear of the other. So, yeah, it is. It's a very prominent. The. One of the other things. It's that. That is actually funny. I haven't thought about this. Now you ask me. Now I. I know the answer. My hometown is Izmir, Simirni and it's a very, very prominent city in Greek mythology. And I grew up with these very old Greek, ancient, you know, Greek, you know, amphitheaters and, you know, libraries and so on. So I was going around in these places. So I think at the very heart of it, I think my home is very much embedded in the Greek mythology or where the Greek mythology, mythological stories took place. So it is. It is not some intellectual aspiration. I think it's. There is some kind of a, you know, homely thing about those texts.
- [39:11]
Maithili Rao
For me, your home that was, you know, an ancient home that has lived on in text.
- [39:20]
Ece Temelkuran
Well, actually, my home is the place where. Yeah, my home is the place where the humanity, the Western civilization came from, or even Mediterranean and Eastern civilization came from. So, yeah, I think that is why in my heart of hearts, I feel very close to those texts.
- [39:37]
Maithili Rao
That's quite lovely. There's a third poem that gets repeated quite a bit in the book, and that's one art by Elizabeth Bishop. Again, not a new poem about 50 years old. Bishop writes about losing two cities, some realms, a continent. But it's a love poem. What's a love poem doing in a book about statelessness?
- [39:59]
Ece Temelkuran
Is it a love poem? I never thought it as a love.
- [40:02]
Maithili Rao
Poem, a heartbreak poem, I guess, being.
- [40:06]
Ece Temelkuran
Very honest now, I never thought that it was a love poem. Yeah, I always thought it about losing, you know, and what I lost is home, I think. And, you know, what I found in this book again, but what I lost was home. So I always read it as a deeper kind of a poem about a deeper kind of loss. Well, she's 50 and I'm 52 now. I can tell you. You're younger, so I have to tell you, when you're 50, love is not that important as it has been in previous decades. So probably she wasn't thinking about love when she was writing it.
- [40:44]
Maithili Rao
Now I'm thinking, oh, I mean, she could have been thinking about multiple things. I always thought that the ending is about. I think what I've read about it historically, too, is it's about the loss of her lover, but it's about loss. And loss is a lot of things. So maybe it's not fair for me to say it's a love poem.
- [41:01]
Ece Temelkuran
Elizabeth Bishop has another poem about Sandpiper. So, yeah, I wanted to put. Put many more poetry in this book. And then I came to these very fundamental ones that played immense role in my life.
- [41:17]
Maithili Rao
So, yeah, I have been reading this book in the evenings around bedtime, and so I Kind of will be reading it, and then I'll also be reading books with my kids. And I found myself, by sheer coincidence, reading books that happen to be about children who run away. So my son has been reading a book called from the Mixed up files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. This is a classic children's book about two kids who run away and go live in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. And then my daughter has been really into this book called Bedtime for Frances by Russell Hoban. And it's about a little badger who runs away and hides under the dining table. And it made me realize that leaving home is such a popular theme in children's books and is sort of understood to be, yes, serious and transformative, but also playful, unexpectedly wonderful. And I wondered if by the end of Nation of Strangers, you felt if in any way you'd written your way towards consolation or something even beyond consolation. Or am I getting carried away?
- [42:26]
Ece Temelkuran
No, you're not getting carried away with exactly this. The idea was this, you know, for 10 years, or like for seven years, I wrote. I started writing this book three years ago. So for seven years I didn't confront with this, like, you know, about my. The pain, my issues of dignity when being called exiled home, you know, is there going back home? I didn't want to talk about or think about these questions because I was in a survival mode. And when you're in a survival mode, you put your heart in the freezer and you don't feel. You just go, go, go. You know, you turn yourself to, you know, automaton, like, you know, whatever. So I didn't. But, yeah, this book is. Is that it is me, you know, making myself a home. But speaking of children, I have to tell you something. One of the most important sentences in my life have been, I'm going to paraphrase it from Walter Benjamin. He says, one of the. The only thing that you cannot remedy is not running away from home when you're 16. That is such a pro. I love that sentence and one more thing, and my editor will hate me now. Somehow I couldn't put it in the book, but when I was growing up and nobody knows this anymore, but you can find it on YouTube. There was a TV series from United States. It's called Dirty Sally. And this Dirty Sally was my heroine. I mean, I was so in awe of her. When I was 5 4, 55 6, Dirty Sally was putting on many clothes and she was on a carriage, one horse carriage. She was constantly on the road. And that was my dream. So probably I had a problem or yeah, I have. I had an issue with this word hoax. He's from the very beginning, maybe I did this to myself. Now I'm thinking.
- [44:28]
Maithili Rao
Before we go, what have you been reading these days? What old or new books are kind.
- [44:33]
Ece Temelkuran
Of are you now it's under my, under my computer so I cannot show you, but Daniel Kelman's last novel, the Director. My God. Amazing. Amazing. You should, everyone should read it. It's about the Austrian filmmaker, real story, by the way, who had to work with the Nazi regime. And it tells a lot about the individuals, the individual struggle with such regimes. So everybody should read about, read that novel. I think not. Daniel Kalman, the director.
- [45:13]
Maithili Rao
Great. Thank you for the recommendation. It has been lovely speaking with you. Ece. Thank you so much.
- [45:18]
Ece Temelkuran
You too. Thank you so much for this lovely conversation.
- [45:22]
Maithili Rao
That was ECE Temelkoran, author of Nation of Strangers, which will be available now online and in stores. I'm Maitha Lee Rao. You've been listening to Intelligence Squared. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for listening to Intelligence Squared. This episode was produced by me, Mia Sorrenti and it was edited by Mark Roberts. For ad free episodes and full length recordings. Become a member over@Intelligencesquared.com membership and to join us at future live events, head over to intelligencesquared.com attend to see our full events program. You've been listening to Intelligence Squared. Thanks for joining us.
- [46:13]
Ece Temelkuran
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Maithili Rao
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Ece Temelkuran
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Maithili Rao
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Ece Temelkuran
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Maithili Rao
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