In Reckless, Hasan Ali Toptaş sends a nameless soldier into a remote, snow-covered village to deliver a mysterious bag. 

The journey quickly becomes stranger than its apparent mission. Suddenly flush with a world where boys hunt birds in the snow, villagers appear and vanish with the logic of dreams, and every encounter seems to carry the pressure of something half-buried, half-forgotten, and not especially keen on being found.

Often described as one of Turkey’s most important contemporary novelists, Toptaş writes here in a mode somewhere between fable, political nightmare and winter hallucination. The novel moves through war, exile, guilt, masculinity and state violence without ever turning itself into an easy allegory. It has the atmosphere of a folk story told by someone who has seen too much and is now being politely evasive about the worst parts.

A spare, uncanny piece of translated fiction for readers drawn to Kafka, Krasznahorkai, Kadare, etc.

First UK edition, first printing, published by Bloomsbury in 2015. Translated from the Turkish by Maureen Freely and John Angliss. Paperback with light shelfwear to covers and edges; pages appear clean and binding sound. Winner of the English PEN Award sticker to front cover.