相关资料
作者采访：
What is the main theme of the book in one sentence for you?
Stories are immortal and retain their freshness even if the transmission methods change from time to time. Maintaining the existence in future is one of the main goals of the authors.
What was your main starting point while writing your book? Why did you write this book?
İt will be a weird answer a little bit but my starting point was my lack of time. There were so many school invitations that I couldn’t find time to write. There is one sentence in Yuan Huan’s Booth that says, “Time expands if one wishes.” So adopting this as a principle, I thought, “How can I expand time?” and eventually this formula came to my mind. I could combine the metafiction with the stories I could write in tight times. This formula both expanded my time and led to the emergence of a solid narrative.
What are the features that can be highlighted regarding the content and technique of the book?
I like doing patchwork with fabrics.
I can’t do it well, but I still like it. For me, this book was like a patchwork made of stories. I guess I managed what I couldn’t do with fabrics in this novel. There are five stories in the book and of course there is a metafiction that connects them with each other. The narrator of the stories, a Chinese writer from far away, gets in touch with a child and starts to tell the situation of some children in Turkey with stories to the main character, İlhami. In these stories, there are working children, children in prison, brave children, and those who want to go to school but cannot.
In education system, there is a principle called “from the simple to the complex”, that is, from easy to difficult. The habit of reading and the love of books are also given to the child by this method. While Yuan Huan’s Booth first proceeds as if it were a series of normal stories, towards the end, the reader begins to feel the confusion whether Yuan Huan is real or not. The excitement and pleasure of the mysterious world of reading begins when this confusion appears. Thus, the reader easily transitions to the depths of literature, as if he/she were leveling up in a book he had started to read elementarily.
What are the distinguishing features of your book from the other books that are published in the same field?
This is a book that can encourage children to read critically. For example, in Yuan Huan’s first story, The Crossed-Out Kids, it is not clear who crossed out the writings in the pâtisserie, and İlhami, who listens to the story, reflects on it. What goes through the mind of İlhami will also guide the reader. Seriously, who crossed out the writing in the pâtisserie? The story is open to be completed and to be concluded by someone else. In order not to leave the reader in too much dark, three options are offered. Those writings were drawn by either Baran, the author or the letters themselves. For the ending of the fiction, the readers will inevitably find themselves in the position where they can build onto the story with one of these three options. I believe that the reader should be as active as the writer. Critical reading also requires this, that is, the reader is not the external element, but the internal element. Yuan Huan’s Booth contains many question marks that will keep the reader active. The main character İlhami, and his classmates sometimes guide the reader as practitioners of the critical reading technique.
Where does the name Yuan Huan come from?
“While writing this book, I wanted the character (the storyteller) to be someone from a far country. Thus the distance would excite the reader (and me) and show that stories have the power to bring people closer with each other no matter where they are in the world. The image of China in Turkey has connotations with distance, so I chose China. When I was searching for the character’s name, I thought I should name it after a Chinese who really lived. As a result of internet searches, I came across the melodious name of Yuan Huan, a government official who lived in the 200s BC. He had various services in the Eastern Han Dynasty and he mentored Commander Cao Cao. He was a loved one; so much so that the people believed that even Cao Cao cried after his death.While Cao Cao is portrayed in the literature as a ruthless tyrant, I was also struck by his humanization in the face of Yuan Huan’s death. I guess that’s why I wanted to keep Yuan Huan alive in my book by giving him another soul.”