AGAINST WINDMILLS
a novel by Ercan Akbay
Approx. 408 pages / 82,543 words. The manuscript is available in Turkish. Translation to the English is in proceed by Çiğdem Aksoy.
Genre:
literary fiction, thriller, black fiction, mystery, suspense.
Summary:
The story begins in the most glamorous jazz club of Istanbul in 1989. The young boss of the club finds himself entangled in a forbidden love affair with a fascinating jazz singer, Serra, which turns into a nightmare very soon. At the end, that twenty years lasting passionate adventure metamorphoses to an exciting ritual. In truth, begging desperately the pitiless monsters that decide to end the life on Earth is not any different from fighting against windmills.
‘Against Windmills’ is a breathtaking novel that will intrigue you to its shocking end with its sophisticated fiction.
Structure:
'Against Windmills’ consists of four time-based episodes; 1989, 1996-97, 2004 and 2009, and a total of fourty-three chapters. At the beginning of each episode, a brief summary of the past years are described, including the general atmosphere of the city, together with the musical and social trends. Each chapter is named to its subject contained, averagely ten pages long, forming a book of 408 pages. The theme of this twenty-year-of-a-period mystery is basically built upon fear of death and iimmortality.
Synopsis:
The story begins in the most glamorous jazz club of Istanbul in 1989. The young boss of the club finds himself entangled in a forbidden love affair with Serra, a fascinating jazz singer, who surprisingly resembles him physically. Serra, the second main character of the book, is engaged with a young man, Baris, and although she already decided divorcing from him because of some undefined reasons, she seems to be unable to execute her decision, and thus, the months-longing loveless togetherness with our hero keeps going on.
Coming together at last, with great excitement, they begin to live together. However, with something dark and strange question marks upon Serra’s behaviors and past, their relationship turns into a nightmare very soon. When Serra dies due to a heroin overdose, our hero becomes the number-one suspect, and all he can do now is to dress and act like her; he flies to Malta using her plane ticket so that the police will think she wasn’t with him at the time she disappeared.
The second episode starts seven years later; we now see our hero who had left the club business, opened himself a music recording studio, got married and had a daughter and he is trying hard to cope with the traumas of the incidence he had fallen through accidentally.
One day, Serra’s ex-fiancé, Baris, who took an unexpected visit to his music studio, he rakes up the past and tries to square with the suspect of murder in his mind. At the end of several struggles and hidden interrogations, the weirdness belonging to Serra’s past has enlightened, but some new mysteries come out to the surface.
Baris’s death from leukemia drags our hero into a strange adventure related to the search of a newly-entered character of the book, Nora, a close friend of Serra-Baris couple, but suddenly disappeared since after that parting accidence.
Nora is a person who needs to be found for several reasons; in fact, she represents the immortality.
In 2004, the first half of the third episode is an adventure of seeking Nora. He finds her finally, in an unusual way, and when he decides hunting down the truth together on her way, Nora makes our hero discover that Serra, the long-dead lover, used to be one of the disciples of a mysterious sect, the Unity, and that she had been assigned the duty of attracting chosen men carrying the ancient genetic legacy and drawing them into that sect which is powerful enough to change the fate of humanity. Preparing for the flood in seven different regions, the disciples follow the way to their Grand Mission, which is kept top secret by the seven Perfect Masters of the Unity.
There is no way out: happiness on Earth is about to vanish…
First the illumination phase, then the cognizance courses, and finally, the Unity’s force to do a bank robbery as a part of his initiation; our hero realizes that he has to perform a series of extraordinary activities to prove his quality, wisdom and fidelity to become a disciple of the sect.
After this exciting robbery, with a shocking twist upon unexpectedness, everything changes and our hero leaves the Unity and Nora with a sharp, severe and sudden decision.
Four years later, in 2008, he is back again in despair, knocking on Nora’s door, begging for the acceptance to the Unity again. Nora forgives and welcomes him.
Thus he continues from where they left, right towards the end of the road. The mystery of the salvation of mankind, which Beharesh Baba, the establisher of the Unity and the last prophet of the fifth era, conceived is revealed at the end of this journey starting in Istanbul and goes all the way to the southern skirts of the holy Mount Ararat.
The adventure ends with an extraordinary ritual during which hundreds of genetically perfect women match with the chosen men.
In a wonderful atmosphere and on a fascinating night…
At the end of the ritual, when the flood reaches in, our hero sees beyond the truth, and that there is no place on the ship for him. Realizing that he is cheated by the Unity and Nora, he has no other choice left to do now; but to resist or to die…
In truth, begging desperately to the pitiless monsters that decide to end the life on Earth is no different from fighting against windmills.