RED MIRROR
“To die, to sleep —
No more — and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to: ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep:
To sleep, perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub,
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil”
Hamlet, Act 3 Scene 1, W. Shakespeare
Red Mirror (208 pages) is Burhan Sönmez’s seventh novel (Avesta Publishing, 2026). This is his second novel since he started to write in his mother tongue Kurdish.
Red Mirror is the story of a woman, named Zaza, and begins on a day when she is on her deathbed in a hospital in Istanbul. Her son witnessed the murder of a journalist ten years ago and was then forced to flee the country under threat. Since then things have changed. There has never been any news of her son again. No one knows what happened to him, not even his fiancé. Was he murdered or is he still alive?
Zaza, who works at the Central Library in Istanbul as an expert in Ancient Greek Literature, searches for her son ceaselessly, but finds no clue.
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The story opens with Zaza lying in bed and her son arrives out of the blue. Because she is ill, her thoughts blur, and she cannot be certain. Is this her son, or is it the Angel of Death who comes to take her? We journey towards the past through their conversations and flashbacks.
Zaza, a child of a family who were believed to be Christian and killed during the Dersim Massacre, was brought to Istanbul as a baby by a priest and left at the Greek Orphanage on Büyükada Island, Istanbul. Because her real name was unknown, she was given the name of the region/people she came from. The story recounts Zaza’s life, beginning in the orphanage and extending to its closure in 1964 (due to the crisis in Cyprus), her love affair, and the child born from this relationship.
The story touches upon Turkey’s political climate (as of the mid-20th century), different aspects of Istanbul, and a woman’s struggle for existence in this city.
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The framework of the story is depicted from a perspective seen through a mirror. Velazquez’s painting “Venus in the Mirror” (Rokeby Venus) holds central importance in the novel’s language. In the painting, Venus’s face is seen in the mirror, looking directly at us, while we perceive her as looking at herself. The story progresses through this perspective, portraying events from different viewpoints. In this way, we can see multifaceted lives intertwined within one life.
The story moves back and forth in mirror and through a language that expands upon Zaza’s knowledge of Greek culture. It incorporates the language of ancient myths as if things are going through a journey similar to Odysseus’ who tries to find a way to get home that is the place of the ultimate unison and happiness.
Two primary sources used for storytelling are Odyssey by Homer and the Red Book by psychoanalyst Jung. In his manuscripts, Jung, by blending ancient philosophy with literary language, attempts to create a kind of psychoanalytic poetry. A quote from this book is used in the first paragraph of each chapter, creating a story in the different dimensions of mirror by a language made with the voices of Homer and Jung.
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