'The Well of Trapped Words' by Sema Kaygusuz

?The Well of Trapped Words? by Sema Kaygusuz, translated by Maureen Freely (Comma Press, 151 pages, £10)

Sema Kaygusuz is the author of four novels and four short story collections published in Turkey. This new volume of her work is the first to appear in English, crisply translated by Maureen Freely and supported by PEN International.

?The Well of Trapped Words? is a slim book of 19 short tales, and its concerns are fairly typical of a particular stripe of Turkey?s left: Feminism, environmental degradation, the tyranny of repressive gender roles, confronting unspoken historical trauma, etc. While feminism sustains much of the work, Kaygusuz also shows flexibility, inhabiting an impressively broad range of characters - from oppressed women to dying old men marrying child brides, from a mother with a mysterious affection for a lethal viper to a street brawler being treated in hospital. Over the course of just 150 pages we get a kind of miniature kaleidoscope of Turkish society. Most of the stories are elusive snapshots that bear rereading, with enough room for the reader to breathe without being spoon-fed.

There?s a hint of magical realism in many of them, with uncanny, unnatural, and often macabre events taking place in otherwise ordinary lives and narratives. Kaygusuz generally avoids expressing her feminism through megaphoned sloganeering, but rather uses creative conceits and sleight of hand. Occasionally you wonder whether some of the stories really should be so evasive and whether there is actually much of substance lurking beneath the surface, but few are longer than 10 pages so it is fair to say that none outstay their welcome.

The translation is tight and is helped by the fact that Kaygusuz mostly avoids clichés and...