2021 · Novel · 14th printing
The Wind Gatherers
A man who does not know the wind’s name is a guest at sea.
Details
- Author
- Nehir Yalın
- Genre
- Novel
- Publisher
- Denizce Yayınları
- First published
- 2021
- pages
- 296
- ISBN
- 978-625-0000-02-9
- printing
- 14th printing
- Formats
- Paperback · E-book · Audiobook
- Narrator
- Cem Karaca Oğuz9 h 8 min
Awards. 2022 Dünya Kitap Book of the Year (Turkish original)
Translations
- German — Die Windsammler · Nordsee Verlag, 2023
- French — Les collecteurs de vent · Éditions du Rivage, 2023
- Italian — I raccoglitori di vento · Marea Edizioni, 2024
- Greek — Οι συλλέκτες του ανέμου · Kyma, 2024
- Bulgarian — Събирачите на вятър · Bryag, 2024
- Arabic — جامعو الريح · Dar al-Bahr, 2025
- Persian — گردآورندگان باد · Nashr-e Daryā, 2025
- English — The Wind Gatherers · Harbour & Sons, 2024
About the book
Rıza is seventy-nine and stitching his last sail. For him the wind has seventeen names; he learned them all from his father and wrote none of them down.
Ada, an engineer sent to the same shore to build a wind measurement station, knows the wind as numbers. Two ways of measuring stand side by side for a summer — then a company arrives, and a petition, and a storm.
The author’s most widely read novel: the loss of a craft told without lament, and without belittling the instruments either.
Read online
Sample chapter · Opening chapter of the novel · 3 min
From the book
p. 63 Don’t think you know a thing because you measured it. The scale has never tasted bread.
p. 152 A craft doesn’t die; there are simply fewer hands waiting for it.
p. 271 The wind used to have seventeen names. Now it has one: strong.
In the press
It deserves to be the most underlined Turkish novel of the decade.
Kitap Eki
Defending the past without falling into nostalgia: Yalın is one of the few who manage it.
Sanat Cephesi
Book club questions
Club guide →Use and copy them freely.
- 01Can Rıza’s and Ada’s ways of knowing really be reconciled?
- 02Is the shore a setting in this novel, or a character?
- 03In the petition chapter, could you decide who was right?
- 04When is the loss of a craft “progress”, and when is it not?
Buy
For independent bookshops and city-by-city stockists see the Where to Buy page.
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.