Wilderness

'Everywhere in the wilderness I hear the cries of other mothers. I call back to them, asking for help, but sometimes they can’t hear me through their own cries’A forty-day journey of trial and transformation has meaning in many cultures, including in Savaş’s own. In this candid, tender essay, she charts a path through an unknown landscape – the first forty days of motherhood – in search of herself and the words for what has happened to her, following the birth of her baby.

Ayşegül Savaş is a critically acclaimed Turkish writer currently based in Paris. She is best known for her novels Walking on the Ceiling, White on White and The Anthropologists and her recent debut collection of short stories, Long Distance. Savaş also regularly contributes short stories and essays to publications including The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Granta Magazine and Los Angeles Review of Books. The Wilderness is Savaş’s debut work of non-fiction.