Sadness at Leaving: An Espionage Romance

by Erje Ayden

Pulp fiction writer Erje Ayden's coy novel is his most autobiographical work--if one accepts his claim that he worked as a spy for the Turkish government in the 1960s and 70s. I wonder if it is... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0936756578
• ISBN13: 9780936756578
• Release Date: June 1987
• Publisher: Semiotext(e)
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 4.6" x 7.0"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

everything is real

One wonders, what if any part of it has he lived? Only because we're all liars, but only the most charming of us (and isn't this what charms are all about?) are good enough to make us not care for at least a little while, about which stories are tied down to our metrocard daily lives, and which have taken flight on wings of imagination. Erje Ayden remains the stranger in a strange land of that strange era, the 60s. His characters in this strangest of spy stories - many of the 15-second walk-ons as well as his central sleeper agent, his stalinist rival and the woman who adapted to both of them in turn - vibrate with a throbbing half-life that testifies to the lives they have sacrificed in secret service to national gods. But it is a real story in every way that matters, picked out in a hunt-and-peck typewritten shorthand. Like so many of the real stories of secret, wasted lives and the ruined plans they hatched, it ends badly. But somehow it exalts the reader, just to have known these two-dimensional characters and the version of their creator that lived while he was creating them. And is leaves us with only one question. Where is Erje Ayden now?

Great

I thought this book was great. When I read it I didn't want to put it down. I recommend it to everyone.