Metin Kacan

Metin Kacan - Agir Roman

Agir Roman has been translated into German (Kacan 2003), and a movie (Agir Roman), directed by Mustafa Altıoklar (1999), was based on it. Kacan is also the author of a collection of short stories with the title "A ship to the Islands" (Adalara Vapur, Kacan 2002) and a book written in a mixted style between prose and poetry, entitled "The tiger at withdrawal" (Harman Kaplan, Kacan 1999).

Much of Kacan's writings deals with life in Istanbul, in particular its poor quarter Dolapdere (not far from Taksim square). To Dolapdere, he sarcastically gave the name "Cholera" (Kolera in Turkish) in Agir Roman, thereby recalling both its shabbiness and the fact that the greatest Polish poet, Adam Mickiewicz, died there from the cholera in 1855. Mickiewicz´ museum at Dolapdere, still open to visitors today, figures in "Ağır Roman". The title of this novel plays ingeniously with the polysemy of the Turkish word Roman, which means both "gypsy" and "novel". Also, together with the adjective ağır, which means "heavy" or "slow" in Turkish, Roman is the designation for a special kind of street music, played by some of the novel's protagonists. Agir Roman tells the tragic story of a young hero who grows up in Cholera quarter but finally fails and commits suicide. His failure parallels the failure of the quarter itself, whose ancient structures as well as its multi-ethnic and multi-religious composition disintegrate.

Fındık Sekiz tells a story about two cars, that appear sometimes as personified figures, and that take the semi-autobiographical protagonist Meto on a mystical journey. At the same time, Meto's conflict with a women, who manages to have him thrown into prison through fraudulent statements, is related, which might reflect some of Kacan's own experiences.

Kacan's style is heavily imbued with Turkish slang, which is called argo in Turkish (< French argot). This choice gives his writings a non-conformistic, frequently vulgar, but overall extremely vivid and creative tone, which has been hailed, among others, by Yıldız Ecevit. Other characteristics of his writing are the personification of natural phenomena and inanimate items such as cars (in particular in Fındık Sekiz), autobiographical details (Kacan grew up in Dolapdere), the blurring of the limitations of poetry and prose, and references to mysticism, in particular Muslim mysticism (Sufism).

At present (2007), Kacan serves a prison term for allegedly having committed a heavy rape in company with the Turkish writer Alp Buğdaycı back in 1995.

literature by Metin Kacan

• Kacan 1995. Kacan, Metin: Agir Roman]. 7th. ed. Istanbul: Metis Yayınları.
• Kacan 1997. Kacan, Metin: Fındık sekiz. Istanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları.
• Kacan 1999. Kacan, Metin: Harman Kaplan. Istanbul: Gendaş Yayınları.
• Kacan 2002. Kacan, Metin: Adalara Vapur. Istanbul: Gendaş Yayınları.
• Kacan 2003. Kacan, Metin: Cholera Blues. Berlin: Dağyeli.

Literature about Metin Kacan

• Hess 1998a. Hess, Michael Reinhard: Ağır Roman. Istanbuler Almanach 2 (1998). 64-66.
• Hess 1998b. Hess, Michael Reinhard: A Glance at the Wilder Side of Turkey: Ağır Roman. Orientalia Suecana 67 (1998). 55-67.
• Ecevit 2004. Ecevit, Yıldız: Türk Romanında Postmodernist Açılımlar [Postmodern Tendencies in the Turkish novel]. 3th ed. Istanbul: Iletisim Yayınları.
• Hess 2005. Hess, Michael Reinhard: The Turkish Car Novel on a Trip: fındık sekiz by Metin Kacan. Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes 95 (2005). 87-118.
• Metin Kacan cezaevinde ["Metin Kacan in prison"; news report in the online edition of Turkish Radikal Newspaper].