The Disenchanted

Eroğlu’s ninth novel, Düş Kırgınları (2005; translated as The Disenchanted, 2013), is a romance that explores the contrasting qualities of love and affection. The condition of disenchantment in the novel arises from the unrealized ideals of the 1968 generation as well as general disappointments about life. The novel is set in Karaburun, İzmir, in a house similar to the one Eroğlu inherited from his grandfather, where he spent his summers and wrote many of his novels. The protagonist of the novel, Kuzey Erkil, is a member of the 1968 generation. He lived through the coups of 1971 and 1980, fleeing abroad after the latter, first to Palestine and then to Germany, where he lived for a while. He then worked as a sailor on board a Portuguese ship, before returning to Turkey in the mid-1990s to settle in Karaburun. In the present of the novel, 2003, Kuzey is having an affair with Çiğdem and runs a hotel in Karaburun with Sami, his friend for thirty years. As the novel develops, flashbacks and diary entries reveal Kuzey’s past, including his love affair with a young woman, Şafak, who stayed at Kuzey’s hotel on holiday. By showing the pain, regrets, and longing born from this love, Eroğlu examines how the wounds of the past reappear in the present and influence relationships.