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 EFE LEVENT

Writer, Unlicensed Anthropologist, Ongoing Concern

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Efe Levent is a writer and editor interested in the borderlands between fact and fiction. His work draws on anthropology, exploring how myths, histories, and ideologies shape the way we see ourselves—and how easily they unravel. His upcoming debut novel, Hot Air, follows tangled conspiracies, fading utopias, and the strange spaces where personal stories meet political ones. He can often be found chasing down footnotes that refuse to stay quiet. He lives in Istanbul, where the past feels less like a backdrop and more like an ongoing negotiation.

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BOOKS

 
 

Greetings Aliens: A Personal History of Science Fiction in Turkey

Greetings Aliens Pt I is an exploration of science fiction in Turkey, written by Efe Levent. In the first installment of what will be a trilogy of zines, Levent delves into the earliest known works of Turkish science fiction, spanning from the 1910s to the 1950s. Through a personal lens, the essay examines the genre’s relationship with irony and raises thought-provoking questions about the role of sincerity in crafting visions of the future.

Turtle Trainer

In the far-off future of 2023...

Turkey is celebrating the republic's 100th year by sending four mutant turtle brothers to explore Mars. But things are not what they seem… Raised by a dystopian state that values loyalty over all else, the confines of the space station start to merge with the limits of their consciousness. Hayret, Hiddet, Hikmet and Hürmet each respond to the harrowing mysteries on a hostile planet,  in their own ways. Will they overcome the dangers lurking among the barren ochre dunes and the explosive geysers boiling underneath their fragile space station? Or will they discover that the real danger lies within their tortured bodies and tormented souls? Brace yourselves for a journey into the depths of a dystopian terror, unlike any you have ever known…

Guide to Every City

Guide to Every City is a guide for a fictional city inhabited by insects. The three different species of insect in Ever City: hopsters, sloggers, and buzzies live segregated lives in their isolated neighbourhoods. The book not only presents a commentary on social divisions within urban life it also satirises orientalism in contemporary travel writing. The fictional author of the guide -Steve McCracker- is a thoroughly unrelatable hipster who genuinely believes that the rest of the world did not exist until he "discovered" it for some overdesigned travel magazine. You will laugh you will cringe, in the words of Steve: you will "never be the same again." 

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Excerpt - Greetings Aliens Pt I
Excerpt - Greetings Aliens Pt I

Many of the stories I read were literally about the authors describing their dream of a utopian future society. There are so many such Turkish sci-fi stories in the first half of the twentieth century that “Utopian Dream” can be classified as an entire subgenre.

Galataport: I came, I saw, I lost
Galataport: I came, I saw, I lost

Istanbul discourse is a dangerous quagmire of clichés, of which "bRidGe BeTweEn eASt aNd wEsT" is but one. But those of us who have lived here long enough are hyper-sensitive to the political intentions behind every statement concerning Istanbul.

Snakes and Ladders
Snakes and Ladders

This type of reckoning with the past is a familiar experience for millennials from peripheral countries. We grew up watching the same cartoons, nagging our parents to buy the same toys and observing the world around us shrink at the same pace. Most importantly, we all had a moment when we thought this new and exciting shared global culture would make us all equal. When it didn't, we ended up experiencing the same sense of disappointment. All the cultural capital we acquired to fit in just made us look more suspicious. Whitey gawped at our ability to speak his language as if we were an entirely different species that miraculously learned to communicate through speech. 

How Acupuncture Cured my Anthropology
How Acupuncture Cured my Anthropology

If I had felt my own confusion about identity as a knot in my stomach, somebody else could have felt it as a compression in their chest, another as an ache on their shoulder.

Alaa Alhassoun: An Artist In Exile
Alaa Alhassoun: An Artist In Exile

 To many like Alaa who have witnessed the brutality of the Assad regime first hand, what is happening in Syria is not just a war, but a revolution. He chuckles, visibly proud of the fact that the uninitiated eyes of Turkish art dealers can not locate the 'war' in his pictures. "How could it not be there, yani?" he muses. "It is a part of me."

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