“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.
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.
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.
Two primary sources used for storytelling are Odyssey by Homer and the Red Book by psychoanalyst Jung.
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“His novels are steeped in imprisonment and memory, with echoes of Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Jorge Luis Borges.” (Jason Farago, The New York Times)
“Sönmez’s words are conquering the whole world.” (ADN Kronos)
“Sönmez’s ability to create marginalized, realistic characters who are pulled into the vortex of deep-rooted, unforgiving tradition is admirable.” (Wayne Catan, Harvard Review)
* 2026 Premio Hemingway, Award Citation :
The 2026 Hemingway Prize for Witness of Our Time is awarded to Burhan Sönmez for his ability to recount, through the power of literature, the pain, memory and dignity of those living on the margins of history, transforming writing into a civil testimony capable of crossing borders, languages and generations. In his novels, Sönmez weaves together individual and collective destinies, giving voice to the persecuted, the exiled, the defeated and the rebellious, showing how political violence and the loss of freedom leave deep marks on lives and consciences. With a style that is both poetic and visionary, yet deeply concrete, the Turkish-Kurdish writer has transformed Istanbul and Anatolia into universal landscapes of the human soul, where pain and hope, memory and the desire for justice coexist. At the roots of his work lies the Kurdish oral tradition in which he grew up: a language long forbidden, preserved in memory as a primary act of resistance. His work, marked by personal experiences of repression and exile, reminds us that literature is not just storytelling, but also moral resistance and a defence of freedom of thought. In a time plagued by wars, nationalisms and new forms of censorship, Burhan Sönmez’s voice continues to bear witness to the right of human beings to safeguard their own memory, identity and freedom.
