A nihilistic wit reminiscent of Samuel Beckett. Independent on Sunday

This is the strange, magical story of a young girl growing up in modern Turkey, from her birth in a small rural village haunted by fairies and demons to her traumatic move to the big city. Based on her own childhood experiences, Latife Tekin's literary debut marked a turning point in Turkish fiction.

Concentrating on a daughter's struggle against her overbearing mother set against the pressures of a rapidly changing society, Dear Shameless Death is a fantastic, hallucinatory novel, with strong feminist insights about what it means to be a woman growing up in Turkey today.

A major best seller in her native Turkey, Latife Tekin maintains a politically active presence and has written a number of literary works. Her first novel, Berji Kristin: Tales from the Garbage Hills, was published by Marion Boyars to great critical acclaim.