Review: The Last Island, Zülfü Livaneli  

By Luke Frostick 

There has been a slow but steady process translating the works of Zülfü Livaneli into English. The latests to be translated is The Island, a political parable about a small idyllic island being turned into hell by an authoritarian politician. Despite being originally written in 2008, readers will easily see the similarities with the state of current Turkish politics. 

The story is told in the form of a long letter from our unnamed protagonist to a friend he simply calls The Writer, who has gone missing, implied to have fallen foul of politically motivated incarceration. It starts out with the simple idyllic life of the islanders, sharing the small island with a few neighbours and a large colony of seagulls. 

Then one of the houses on the island is sold to a former president, who despite claims of wanting to live out a tranquil retirement, begins to shape the island in his own image with more and more authoritarian tactics. 

The president first sets himself against the seagulls of the island and resorts to increasingly more extreme and foolish methods to remove the gulls and gain control over the island. Each of The President’s escalations increasingly ruins the environment and the lives of the inhabitants. 

The story has a predictable ominousness to it. From the moment the president sets foot on the island it is clear where the plot is going. It does have its twists and turns but does not do much to surprise the reader. This is perhaps a deliberate choice on the part of the writer as the narrow-minded and simple thinking of the president really can only lead to destruction. It does, however, lack a bit of subtlety. The President is irredeemably evil, vain, and stupid. Unlike other political parables like, say, Waiting For the Barbarians (Cortez), we don't get any look inside the president’s head to find anything that might explain him. The president is bad because he is bad in The Island. 

The story teeters on the edge of the absurd as the war against the seagulls escalates in amusing ways. This feels appropriate as the machinations of authoritarian politicians and the outcomes they create are so often ridiculous. 

As a parody and an examination of politics in the microcosm, it is an interesting look at how authoritarianism in general can corrupt any society. The reason it remains relevant to contemporary Turkish politics is that it is not commenting directly on any one political movement, party, or figure, but personified authoritarianism in the round. Contemporary readers will notice the environmentalism that is important in this book. A subplot about turning the pristine island into a hotel complex is one that finds sad, easy comparison with the recent changes to beach resets along the Turkish cost. 

The Island is a strong book. Possibly not Livaneli’s best, but it moves along at a good pace, the parody is strong enough that it is not condescending or overly predictable, and Livaneli, as always, has an enjoyable prose style.