The last tram in Europe

'The Last Tram' by Nedim Gürsel, translated by Ruth Whitehouse (Comma Press, $15, 184 pages)

At least since the great Naz?m Hikmet died in Moscow in 1963, exile has had an elevated position in Turkey's literary culture. The soil of exile was regularly watered before and after Hikmet fled the country in 1951, and in the wrong hands, "exile" can be self-regarding and pompous. There is certainly something self-consciously heroic about Hikmet's literary character, but the fact that he was a poet of global significance justifies any pomposity. In the right hands, exile can be fertile artistic territory.

Nedim Gürsel was forced to leave Turkey after the 1980 military coup, and he has lived abroad in Europe in the decades since. Directly or indirectly, the wistful stories collected in "The Last Tram" all draw on his experiences away from his native country. They generally center on male central characters, lonely and away from home in various European cities, staring mournfully through strangers' windows or waiting listlessly at train stations. During one of the stories, the narrator, surely a thinly veiled version of the author himself, states: "What I know about is absence; the endless geography of yearning. What I know about is trains passing through stations without stopping and the waiting rooms left behind." The result is a collection of largely well-crafted, modest ruminations on memory, loss, and passing time; the perspective is self-conscious and autobiographical without being postmodern.

Some of the stories are more impressive than others, and a few include some cringeworthy purple prose, succumbing to the romantic ideal of the writer-in-exile:

In his tiny room, where there is no trace of his country, his past, or...