The Applicant

About the Book

'An important and radical new literary voice' Elif Batuman

It's 2017 and Leyla, a leftwing Turkish twenty-something living in Berlin, is scrubbing toilets at an Alice in Wonderland-themed hostel in order to stay afloat while awaiting a verdict on her visa status. Having failed her master's thesis and sued the German university over its decision, she is on the verge of losing her student visa and being forced to return to Istanbul, a city she thought she'd left behind for good.

As the clock winds down on her temporary visa, Leyla meets a right-wing Swedish tourist at a bar one night and-against her political convictions and better judgment-begins to fall in love. Will she choose to live a cookie-cutter life as the wife of a Volvo salesman, or just as unimaginable, return to Turkey to her mother and sister, codependent and enmeshed, the ghost of her father still haunting their lives?

Written in wry, propulsive diary form and with probing self-reflection, Koca radically and courageously explores one's place in a deeply uncertain world, examining the bounds of state violence and self-destruction, of social dissociation and intense familial love. The Applicant is a stunning dissection of a liminal life lived between borders and identities.

About the Author :
Nazli Koca is a writer and poet from the Mediterranean coast of Turkey who holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Notre Dame. She has lived in Berlin and now lives in New York City. She is the recipient of grants from the Nanovic Institute, Soham Dance Space, and United States Artists. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Threepenny Review, BookForum, Second Factory, The Chicago Review of Books, and books without covers, among other outlets. The Applicant is her first novel.

Review :
Written in journal-style entries, Koca's debut novel keeps its pace taut without ever seeming strained or frenetic. Leyla is a witty, acutely observant, and deeply sympathetic character who manages to tell the details of her life-both the transcendent epiphanies and the debauched aftermaths-with an honesty that disavows patronizing pity. This is a book about some of the largest issues of our time-ethnic identity, national belonging, the psychological traumas of patriarchy and White supremacy, sexual ownership, feminist reckoning-but it is also, and perhaps primarily, a book about the intimacy between a character and a reader as one agrees to talk and the other agrees to listen. A powerful debut that heralds a voice intent on being heard. An important and radical new literary voice A virtuosic, visceral meditation on borders, in-betweenness, and identity, and a testament to why we read in the first place: to laugh, to be devastated. With exhilarating and eviscerating wit, Nazli Koca is a daring and provocative prose stylist with heart An exuberant debut from Nazli Koca, who has something to declare about both the boldness and the fear gripping the young navigating the cruel farce of our modern world Nazli Koca has the rare gift of making you laugh and weep within a page. Bold and original. An exceptional novel Superb... a three-page narrative about Leyla's friend's experience as an au pair is Tolstoy-level stuff, offering a window into human relationships fractured by patriarchal violence... The Applicant [has] a brilliant, and challenging, political awareness