The Highly Unreliable Account of the History of a Madhouse

The Highly Unreliable Account of the Brief History of a Madhouse is an ever-expanding novel that moves at a dizzying pace. A literary panorama of Turkey that defies boundaries spatial or temporal: one end in the 19th century, and the other in the 21st. A book of 'human landscapes' that startles anew with a completely unexpected turn of events, immediately after deceiving the reader into thinking the end of a plot line might be in sight.

The novel starts in a small-town mental asylum with its back to the Black Sea, and weaves its way through a highly entertaining chain of interlinked lives, each link a complex and bewildering personality. The Highly Unreliable Account… follows the trails of political and social milestones left on individual lives across a span of nearly a century.



Story writer and novelist Ayfer Tunç, who is a one of the most recent brilliant pens in Turkish literature, has received a lot of attention for her first short story book both from the literary circles and from readers. She was born in 1964, graduated from Istanbul University, School of Political Sciences.

She started working as a journalist in 1989 and worked for highly circulated periodicals and dailies. She worked as editor-in-chief at Yapı Kredi Publishing House between 1999-2004. Furthermore she wrote many screenplays. Tunç's work is about the virtues of being a lonely city dweller and a human being, and with deep insight she describes the suffering that comes along with it. With her book My Parents Will Visit You If You Don't Mind: Our Life in the '70s was first published in 2001, she won the international Balkanika Literary Award in 2003 among seven participating countries. The book was translated into six Balkan languages. The same year her screenplay Cloud in the Sky, inspired by Sait Faik's short stories, was filmed and televised. She has also co-authored a non-fiction study named Two Faced Sexuality with Oya Ayman.