Dilara is renovating her ensuite bathroom now that her father has moved into the Salerno apartment she and her husband have lived in for seven years. Her builders have been fiercely protective of their work, not allowing her to view it until they’ve finished when she’s shocked to find a replica of a Turkish prison cell.

A child psychologist in her homeland, Dilara is a housewife and caregiver for her demented father, an academic, vocal against Erdoğan’s increasingly repressive regime, blacklisted and lucky to escape prison or worse before they fled Turkey. When her anxious husband discovers the cell, he goes into freefall, leaving Dilara to struggle with her father’s care. Ironically, as life becomes harder outside it, Dilara takes refuge there when she can, eventually making an irrevocable choice between her home and her homeland.

I was doubtful about Renovatio's premise but sufficiently intrigued to give it a try. Touchingly dedicated to caregivers, this fable-like novel explores themes of memory, homeland and exile using the metaphor of the prison cell to stand for both exile and the restrictions of caregiving. Through Dilara’s voice, we learn what exile means for her, her husband and her father against a background of the waves of repression and suppression enacted by Erdoğan’s government since 2014. Both she and her husband have tried to make a life in Italy but while he feels at home, she still yearns for a Turkey that she knows no longer exists, depicted in evocative descriptions of the sights, sounds and smells of Istanbul. The ending is a shock, but it works. A slim, poignant and inventive novel which will stay with me for some time.

The Renovation by Kenan Orhan deftly explores the immigrant experience and the dynamics of caring for an elderly parent. I found the parts about language particularly interesting.

"Hope is a symptom of the strangeness of life. Who was I to say what is and isn't possible while I hid in a prison in my bathroom?"

"When there is something missing from you, how do you fill the space? Do you describe the boundary of the void obsessively, or simply cover its shapelessness with a veil?"

Is it too early to identify a Booker nominee for 2026?

The Renovation by Kenan Orhan is a book that requires attention.

Dilara with her husband and father are exiles. They have moved to a village near Salerno in Italy to escape the persecution of her father in Turkey- an outspoken opponent of the Erdogan administration. Leaving behind the control of a government and the rise of political prisoners. However, life changes when the request for a new bathroom is turned upside down when the builders install a Turkish prison cell. and Dilara's father life changes as the shadow of Alzheimers deepens and he closes in on himself.

Dilara finds herself bewitched by this room - she hears the voices of female prisoners, the orders of guards and the aromas of a past life. She is drawn to the cell as a place of escape.

The metaphorical comparison of living in a new country with no friends to feeling imprisoned is evident; the decline of her father as his world closes down and he withdraws into his own solitary existence( a personal cell); the continual fear of persecution and potential repercussions echo through Dilara's mind especially as she reflects upon the turmoil caused in their lives in Turkey and subsequent "escape". as well as the isolation of being away from family and a past life. Dilara finds solace in a cell.

This is a story of millions fleeing wars, political conflicts and regimes and the internal struggles and the cells that people find themselves living within longing to be free in their homelands.

Powerful, haunting, captivating - a book that will leave you unsettled but equally makes us reflect upon the harsh realities of life.