Parla, J.2024-07-182024-07-1820240010-4132https://doi.org/10.5325/complitstudies.61.1.0049https://hdl.handle.net/11411/6674This article examines the Kurdish politician Selahattin Demirtaş’s prison novel Leylan (2OI9) in relation to the Turkish tradition of Künstlerroman, which dates back to the late nineteenth century.Through a reading of the figure of the writer manqué,it argues that Demirtaş occupies an unprecedented place in having staged the writer manqué as a subaltern autodidact rather than as a troubled intellectual,in uniting the political and the transcendental, and in affirming the potential hidden in incomplete texts and lives. © 2024 Penn State University Press. All rights reserved.eninfo:eu-repo/semantics/closedAccessKurdish NovelKünstlerromanPrison LiteratureArticle2-s2.0-8518818153110.5325/complitstudies.61.1.0049611Q24961