Left Bank Books presents, Turkish American writer and a recipient of the O. Henry Prize Kenan Orhan, who will discuss the fiercely imaginative debut story collection, I Am My Country, in-store and on YouTube live June 13th at 7pm!

Order signed and personalized copies of I Am My Country from Left Bank Books to support authors and independent bookstores! Those unable to make it in person, may leave personalization note in order.

**About the Book**
A fiercely imaginative debut story collection by "a startling talent who can seemingly do anything" (Anthony Marra) explores the lives of ordinary people in Turkey to reveal how even individual acts of resistance have extraordinary repercussions.

Spanning decades and landscapes, from the forests along the Black Sea to the streets of Istanbul, Kenan Orhan's ​playful stories ​conjure dreamlike worlds--of talking animals, flying houses, and omniscient prayer-callers--to ​examine humanity's unfaltering pursuit of hope in even the darkest circumstances.

A determined florist trains a neighborhood stray dog to blow up a corrupt president. A garbage collector finds banned instruments--and later, musicians--in the trash and takes them home to form a clandestine orchestra in her attic. A smuggler risks his life to bring a young woman claiming to be pregnant via immaculate conception across the border with Syria. A poor cage-maker tries to use his ability to talk to birds to woo his childhood love just before the 1955 Istanbul pogrom. These characters are united by a desperate yearning to break free from the volatile realities they face: rising authoritarianism, cultural and political turmoil, and staggering violence.

Ranging from the absurd to the tenderhearted, the stories in I Am My Country illuminate the constant force amid one country's history of rampant oppression and revolutionary progress: the impulse to survive.

**Reviews**
"I Am My Country employs many different literary styles and voices to dazzling effect."--The Atlantic

"Orhan's talents are immense, and the full glory of his storytelling is on display." --Andrew Sean Greer, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Less Is Lost

"A collection like I Am My Country is a cause for rejoicing. Orhan has a knife-sharp sense of the human impulse for freedom and hope, even amid moments of oppression and displacement." --Kelly Link, author of Get in Trouble

"Moving between the real and the fantastic, the comic and the tragic, these magnificent tales create a complex portrait of Turkey's past, present, and future. Orhan is a startling talent who can seemingly do anything." --Anthony Marra, author of Mercury Pictures Presents

"A remarkable literary debut . . . These stories have the force of truth and the lasting power of fable." --Saïd Sayrafiezadeh, author of American Estrangement

**About the Author**
Kenan Orhan is a Turkish American writer and a recipient of the O. Henry Prize. His stories have appeared in The Paris Review, Massachusetts Review, Prairie Schooner, The Common, and elsewhere, and have been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories. Orhan received his MFA from Emerson College and lives in Kansas City. I Am My Country is his first book.