The Tribe of the Esraris

"Esraris, the pure, the benevolent, those who reach out to the poor in their snow-covered houses not with stories of salvation but with blankets, realists who bide their time. They do not revolt, nor do they hide." *** "The Tribe of the Esraris." is an acclaimed Turkish poet's heartfelt commentary on our times, an inquiring companion to the new millennium. In a series of fragmentary prose pieces on a wide range of topics, Ahmet Guntan offers new ways to break the proverbial "silence" of the poet and tackle the world head-on. He takes the floor as one of the Esraris, the eponymous tribe of uneasy souls, and builds the framework of a poetics of deeper engagement with the world around us. Reading in part like a philosophical diary, The Tribe of the Esraris. is a wake-up call to be heard, a poetic testimony written with olive trees, income inequality, and E.M. Cioran in mind. "I find Guntan's writing intriguing and poetic, suggestive almost like haiku, far-ranging from international politics to observations of some corner of Istanbul. His culture is immense (from Proust to the hadith) and his thoughts uncannily original. This is the spirituality of the 21st century." Edmund White