The book is only a reflection of the pain of Cyprus and its inhabitants. The characters and their stories are much common in Cyprus, yet so hidden. The author aims to shed a light on the emotional conflicts that people of Cyprus had and still has to go through…

Love is like a door. You step in even though you don’t know where it leads to.

Art historian Melike, couldn’t possibly know that the Greek director Petro whom she will visit the Byzantine churches in Istanbul with, was calling her for another reason.

She couldn’t even imagine that with Petro, she will start learning about the secrets in her family, love stories, stories about the missing and stories about the island in pain.

“Κόκκινο Καλοκαίρι / Yaz Sıcağı” is a story of falling apart and coming together; of father and the daughter; of woman and man; of mother and son; of territories separated into two and siblings that fell apart.I was tired of my own emotional tides, fights within me, to be driven away in the past.. It’s all because of Petro. He brought with him the memory of my grandmother, and also of my father. He instantly opened the windows that I closed with just a blink of his eyes. I was sure that those windows won’t be open again, that they would be rusty, swollen, tightened..

About the author: Defne Suman

Defne Suman was born in Istanbul in 1974. She completed her bachelor’s and master’s degree in Boğaziçi University Sociology department. The article that came out from her master’s thesis, “Feminism, Islam and Public Space”, was published in the book “New Public Faces of Islam”. In 2007 she launched a blog called “İnsanlık Hali (Human Nature)” which became a website with regular readers from Turkey and all around the world. In 2011 she published “Mavi Orman (Blue Forest)” which consists of her essays and travel journals. In 2014 she published her first novel “Saklambaç (Hide and Seek) and “Emanet Zaman” was published in 2016. She still lives in between Athens and Istanbul; continues to write novels and essays that explore the human psychology in modern society.