Leyla is the youngest of three sisters and two brothers brought up in a small Anatolian town in the 1950s. The children adore their long-suffering mother Ermine, but suffer frequent abuse at the hands of their father, Halid Bey, a violent, dominating, illiterate Chechen refugee. The family live in poverty as a result of Halid抯 inability to make a success of any of his opportunities, and he compensates for his social failure by ruling his family like a capricious pasha. The mother and children evolve into a cohesive unit as they seek to survive domestic trauma and financial misfortune.

After a time the family moves to Istanbul, where, to begin with, their fortunes improve. Soon, however, the father抯 instability leads them once more through the old cycles of prosperity and poverty. Leyla requires all the determination learned from her mother to make a success of a marriage against the odds, and strives to carve a better niche � outside Turkey if necessary. Set in the Turkey of the Cold War years, caught between the forces of nationalism and political radicalism, Leyla marks a daring departure for the maverick Zaimoglu. A world away from his wickedly sharp takes on Turkish- German youth and language, here he offers us insights into the Turkey of his childhood � and pulls off the tricky feat of narrating his tale through the eyes of a female protagonist.

This could be the work to introduce an English-language readership to one of the most vibrant of voices � and personalities � of contemporary German-language literature.