The Renovation

De: Kenan Orhan

Brought to you by Penguin.

A dazzlingly original new voice in literary fiction for fans of Ali Smith, Mohsin Hamid and Elif Shafak

The Renovation is a heart-breaking portrait of one family caught in the tides of history, grappling with grief, exile, politics and the painful absurdity of love

Dilara's father is disappearing. His memories are collapsing, dementia stealing a little more of him each day. She has persuaded him to move in with her, hiring builders to adapt her apartment to his new needs, but when the renovation is complete she discovers a big problem: instead of a new en-suite bathroom, the builders have installed a Turkish prison cell.

At first she is outraged. There has surely been some mistake. Dilara's family are exiles – they left Turkey many years ago and have never been back. The last thing she wants is a piece of her estranged homeland appearing uninvited in her new home.

But as the weeks pass, her indignation gradually gives way to curiosity. Beyond the cell door, she glimpses Turkish guards going about their work. Through the cell walls, she hears Turkish prisoners murmuring, rustling, crying out in their sleep. And in the strange, impossible air of the cell itself, she smells the sesame scent of freshly baked simit, she tastes the fine dust of the Anatolian steppe on her tongue.

Even as she struggles to care for her father, to keep the family finances afloat and stop the wheels coming off her marriage, Dilara is drawn back again and again to the mysterious prison cell, and through it to a city that once belonged to her – to the salt wind off the Marmara, the sky full of gulls and domes and minarets – drawn inexorably back to Istanbul.

© Kenan Orhan 2026 (P) Penguin Audio 2026

Reseñas de la Crítica

Addictive and chilling, yet so sensitive, so beautifully told – like Kafka by way of Pedro Almodóvar – I couldn’t put it down and I didn’t want it to end. Kenan Orhan is a truly gifted writer, drawing us down into a tunnel of memory and madness (Avni Doshi, author of 'Burnt Sugar')

Elegant, propulsive and wholly original, The Renovation is a profound meditation on familial duties, memory, displacement and the devastating longing for a home that exists solely in the past. It will stay with me for a long time (Cecile Pin, author of 'Wandering Souls')

The Renovation brilliantly describes what it’s like for “elsewhere” to be “here”. An instant entry not just into the canon of migrant literature but into the literature of now (Isabel Waidner, author of 'Sterling Karat Gold')

Written with a slyly comic touch, The Renovation has at its heart an unexpected and powerfully charged emotional space. There are encounters between Dilara and her ageing, exiled father that will stay with me for a long time to come (Chetna Maroo, author of 'Western Lane')