Season of the Sardine

CONTEMPORARY

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If a woman’s life could be gathered into four seasons, her true season would be the Season of the Sardine. It is the moment when even hope seems lost, when branches fall silent, when all roots appear dry, yet from the smallest crack in the earth a woman rises again.

Season of the Sardine tells the story of all women through Buket, Şoger and Sevda. In the nature of existence, one strikes like lightning, another chills like deep winter, and another blooms like spring in the heart. Love sinks from the heart into the stomach. Workers leave for distant lands. Two angels choose human form. Four generations grow up without a mother. Humi and Buket cross into the hidden realms of being.

When the Season of the Sardine arrives, a woman is no longer who she once was. She becomes everything she has endured and everything she has transformed into. Women cling to young branches. They bow before the fire. They rise like flame. They melt the frost with the sun. They slip into the hair of the world like a quiet rebellion.

Humanity begins to see that life is not long enough to hide our true feelings. Since the first stories of the earth, women have given birth to a new identity for humankind. If the Season of the Sardine had a lens, it would show the lamps that unite every root between East and West.

Souls are blessed with incense. Songs rise from the dust of death. Violins bloom from graves. Clarinets sprout from pots. The sixth season, the Season of the Sardine, stands outside all calendars and belongs only to itself.

Tevfik Aytekin is a novelist and columnist whose voice emerged from the cultural crossroads of Turkey and Cyprus. He began his writing career at Milliyet, one of Turkey’s most respected newspapers, where he contributed weekly columns for more than two years. Since 2014, he has continued to write and later edited GazeddaCyprus, shaping thoughtful commentary on society, culture and the human condition.

His debut novel, Season of the Sardine, was published in Turkey in 2020 and immediately attracted the attention of the country’s literary world. Shortly after its release, both an interview and a full-length review of the novel appeared in Varlık Magazine, the most established literary journal in Turkey.

Tevfik is currently working on his second book. His writing continues to draw strength from his wide cultural experience, psychological depth and a refined sensitivity to the hidden stories within people and places.