The Light at the Bottom of the Well
Novel · 2024 · 7th printing
Novel202114th printing
The Wind Gatherers
The last sailmaker on the Black Sea coast and an engineer from Istanbul describe the same wind in two different languages.
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.
From the book
“Don’t think you know a thing because you measured it. The scale has never tasted bread.”
“A craft doesn’t die; there are simply fewer hands waiting for it.”
“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
Use and copy them freely. Club guide →
- 1.Can Rıza’s and Ada’s ways of knowing really be reconciled?
- 2.Is the shore a setting in this novel, or a character?
- 3.In the petition chapter, could you decide who was right?
- 4.When 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.
