Description

The stories in SANKOFA make it clear that racism and violence do not only come from certain groups, but are universal phenomena. However, the book invites us to reflect on topics that play a decisive role in our perception and sometimes in our lives.

The novel begins in a small Anatolian border town and ends in the USA. Bridges are built between different places in the world, between violence in the past and the present. When you read it, you don't feel like the story is something that has already been overcome, but rather you feel like you are in the middle of the story - and in the middle of the world. Because: the much-vaunted “culture of remembrance” is not being developed in relation to one country, but transnationally. Each of the four books that make up Sankofa allows us to empathize with a different country, a different time, and a different protagonist. And also understand that neither the role of the perpetrator is permanently cemented nor that of the victim.

A narrative about all of these issues could feel like a moralizing finger-wagging. But it doesn't do that, because SANKOFA doesn't sacrifice the characters to any kind of wisdom, but tells their exciting, rousing, contradictory stories and doesn't give us answers, but lets us ask questions - even if we don't notice it while reading.

In a world that struggles to think beyond its own national or group perspectives, such books are more important than ever.

Akhanlı's language is precise and forceful. He never loses himself in didactic tones, but rather lets the stories speak for themselves. In doing so, he invites us readers to ask questions that go far beyond the individual story. I am particularly impressed by the ability to seamlessly connect different time levels and geographical locations. Each section of the book gives us a different perspective on the same universal themes, and yet none of the stories feel incomplete.”

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Daniel from Mediennerd.de

Dogan Akhanli creates a broad panorama in “Sankofa”. Geographically, it extends from Anatolia to the Rhineland, chronologically from the Turkish military dictatorship of the 1980s to the beginning of the pandemic in 2020. Historical events appear here and there - the murder of the journalist Hrant Dink as well as the NSU trial.

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Martin Oehlen, Frankfurter Rundschau

Doğan tells about real people, about complex characters who become playthings of politics and history, who have to go through terrible things and yet have something in common, a common denominator that unites them despite all their differences: they retain their humanity.”

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Gerrit Wustmann, 54books.de