The Renovation

The Renovation brilliantly describes what it’s like for "elsewhere" to be "here". An instant entry not just into the canon of migrant literature but into the literature of now

Isabel Waidner, author of 'Sterling Karat Gold'

Addictive and chilling, yet so sensitive, so beautifully told – like Kafka by way of Pedro Almodóvar – I couldn’t put it down and I didn’t want it to end. Kenan Orhan is a truly gifted writer, drawing us down into a tunnel of memory and madness

Avni Doshi, author of 'Burnt Sugar'

Elegant, propulsive and wholly original, The Renovation is a profound meditation on familial duties, memory, displacement and the devastating longing for a home that exists solely in the past. It will stay with me for a long time

Cecile Pin, author of 'Wandering Souls'

Written with a slyly comic touch, The Renovation has at its heart an unexpected and powerfully charged emotional space. There are encounters between Dilara and her ageing, exiled father that will stay with me for a long time to come

Chetna Maroo, author of 'Western Lane'

Truly original, this debut novel grips from start to finish

Elle

A surreal novel of migration and memory [which] follows Orhan’s celebrated 2023 story collection

Guardian

Elegant, disarming, evocative... [An] allegory about family, country, and the failure of memory

Kirkus

Tender [and] astonishing

Booklist

A haunting meditation on memory and displacement that reconsiders the meaning of liberation

New Yorker

Surreal, mysterious, engrossing... A domestic drama shaped by the political turbulence of the Erdogan era

Mail on Sunday

A superb first novel, impressive on every level... At once an urgent allegory about what it is to live in exile, it’s equally a powerful, visceral and heartbreakingly uncompromising portrait of dementia

Daily Mail

I love this book — it’s a book club host’s dream. I was electrified by the conceit… I felt like I was falling through a series of trap doors. I call these ‘Trojan horse books’: zany top level, really deep interior, with a bunch of surprises

New York Times Book Review (MJ Franklin on The Book Club Podcast)

I mean, I loved this book. The first name that comes to mind for me is Kafka… I did not see [the ending] coming, but after I read it and put the book down, I realized that was the only way it could end

New York Times Book Review (Dave Kim on The Book Club Podcast)