Sparse writing delivers more feeling sometimes, more than a hill of words. The Wounded Age defends that “less is more” adage more than adequately. Edgü is master of the cut, clipped prose; it is this brevity of language that paints a dark history of Turkish war and tragedy. The sense of nothingness is poignant here, deliberate, necessary to understand the effect of war on its subjects.

This collection of stories is marked by an unusual delivery via poetry. The stories unfold in lyric format; this does not mask the pain of ethnic refugees and the suffering of war that is its subject, but in fact highlights it and makes it more powerful. It is as if the Edgü or the reader would only be able to handle such pain if it were framed in poetry; the reality of war and of those mowed down in its path needs to be formatted in this way in order for the reader to see the war for its intimate effects.

The stories and poems themselves evoke a sense of fracture in Turkish life; there is a disjointedness that is purposeful, performative. These are not historical fictions; these are emotive accounts of the Turkish past.

Overall, a beautiful and dark landscape of Edgü’s world.