The Blacksmith's Daughter

Told with great affection for his characters, Selim Özdoğan’s trilogy traces out the life of Gül, a Turkish girl who grows up in rural 1950s Anatolia and then moves to Germany as a migrant worker. Book one details her initially idyllic childhood, ruptured by her mother’s early death. Ever close to her loving father, Gül grows into a warm-hearted, hard-working young woman. The Blacksmith’s Daughter is a novel full of carefree summers and hard winters, old wives’ tales and young people’s ambitions – the melancholy beauty and pain of an ordinary life.

‘Reading it was like falling in love. If everyone read this book, the world would be a better place – more considerate, more liveable, more tolerant.’ 
Fatih Akın, director of The Edge of Heaven;
‘The book’s muted poetry all the way to its quiet ending warms the soul like later summer wind gently stroking through hair.’ Sächsische Zeitung;
‘The novel enchants its readers with the sincerity and love with which it assesses the weight of the simple things in life.’ Fachdienst Germanistik;
‘A mature, light, wise book.’ Kreuzer magazine

Author Biography

Selim Özdoğan was born in Germany in 1971 and has been publishing books since 1995. Apart from writing he likes being on stage, practicing yoga and drinking coffee, and is constantly trying to find ways to express the life within him.

Ayça Türkoğlu is a literary translator from German and Turkish. Her work has been shortlisted for the Helen & Kurt Wolff Translator’s Prize. She lives in North London.

Born in London and based in Berlin for more than twenty years, Katy Derbyshire translates contemporary German writers. Her published work includes books by Clemens Meyer, Christa Wolf, Heike Geissler and Olga Grjasnowa.