After a shooting in a coffee house, Fisher Selim — solitary, sea-obsessed, half-mythic in the eyes of his neighbours — is blamed for a murder he did not commit.

In a city already divided by wealth and deprivation, suspicion spreads quickly and Selim, an outcast long before the crime, becomes the easiest man to sacrifice.

Set in a fishing village caught between modern Istanbul and its neglected underbelly, Yaşar Kemal’s novel is raw, lyrical, and unflinching. The sea is restless, indifferent, magnificent, and mirrors the turbulence of a community where injustice breeds paranoia and myth overtakes fact.

A stark portrait of marginalisation, dignity, and the thin line between legend and scapegoat, The Sea-Crossed Fisherman is one of Kemal’s most intense explorations of social fracture and human endurance. A keystone of Turkish literature.