It’s 2017 and Leyla, a Turkish twentysomething living in Berlin, is scrubbing toilets at an Alice in Wonderland–themed hostel after failing her thesis, losing her student visa, and suing her German university in a Kafkaesque attempt to reverse her fate. Increasingly distant from what used to be at arm’s reach—writerly ambitions, tight-knit friendships, a place to call home—Leyla attempts to find solace in the techno beats of Berlin’s nightlife, with little success. Right as the clock winds down on the hold on her visa, Leyla meets a politically conservative Swedish tourist and—against her leftist convictions and better judgment—begins to fall in love, or something like it. Will she accept an IKEA life with the Volvo salesman and relinquish her creative dreams, or return to Turkey to her mother and sister, codependent and enmeshed, her father’s ghost still haunting their lives? In the pages of her diary, while she waits for the German court’s verdict on her future, Leyla begins to parse her unresolved past and untenable present. With scorching wit and startling brevity, Leyla gives voice to the working-class immigrant struggle to find safety, self-expression, and happiness. The Applicant is an extraordinary dissection of a liminal life between borders and identities, an indelible and darkly funny debut.
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