2024 · Novel · 7th printing
The Light at the Bottom of the Well
Where the water withdraws, the earth gives back everything it hid, one thing at a time; it does not hurry — it sends the smell first.
Details
- Author
- Nehir Yalın
- Genre
- Novel
- Publisher
- Denizce Yayınları
- First published
- 2024
- pages
- 328
- ISBN
- 978-625-0000-01-2
- printing
- 7th printing
- Formats
- Hardcover · Paperback · E-book · Audiobook
- Narrator
- Yeliz Doğan10 h 23 min
Awards. 2024 Dünya Kitap Novel of the Year — shortlist
Translations
- German — Das Licht am Grund des Brunnens · Nordsee Verlag, 2025
- French — La lumière au fond du puits · Éditions du Rivage, 2025
- English — The Light at the Bottom of the Well · Harbour & Sons, 2026
About the book
Selma Akkuş has spent forty years looking for water: first on the dry plains of Anatolia, then in deserts on the other side of the world. Three months before she retires, a letter arrives from the village where she was born. The single well has run dry, and the seven remaining households believe she is the only person who knows where the water went.
When she returns she finds no water at the bottom of the well but a chest: inside it a notebook from the summer of 1974, two letters and a map drawn by a child. A girl disappeared in the village that summer, and no one ever said her name again.
A novel about drought and, just as much, about silence: what surfaces when the water withdraws, and how a community buries its own story.
Read online
Sample chapter · First two chapters of the novel · 7 min
From the book
p. 41 Drought is not the rain stopping. Drought is nobody waiting for rain any more.
p. 118 A village remembers as deep as its well; once the bottom shows, everyone looks the other way.
p. 265 For forty years I looked for water. It turns out I was looking for the ones who kept quiet.
In the press
Yalın turns drought from scenery into a moral question. The most assured novel of the year.
Kitap Eki, March 2024
Her sentences behave like water: calm, insistent, and in the end they wear everything down.
Edebiyat Defteri
Book club questions
Club guide →Use and copy them freely.
- 01Is Selma’s return a resolution or a reckoning? What do you think she went looking for?
- 02Whose memory does the water stand for? What did the well running dry make visible?
- 03Can the villagers’ shared silence be a form of protection? Have you witnessed such a silence?
- 04What does the difference between the 1974 notebook and Selma’s voice tell you?
- 05Is the rain in the final chapter really forgiveness? Could it be read another way?
- 06The title says “light”, yet most scenes happen in the dark. What does that choice do?
Buy
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Signed and dedicated copies
- Signed copies are shipped by Liman Kitap (Sinop) and Kıyı Bookshop (Izmir).
- For a dedication, add the name to the order note; dedicated copies are prepared once a month.
- Books mailed in to be signed cannot be accepted; at signings there is no limit.