The Madman's Shirt (Book)

Deli Gömleği, Güray Süngü’s first story collection, first published in 2010. The book consists of twelve stories in total. In 2014, it was awarded the Necip Fazıl Hikâye Award based on its stories and themes.

The stories focus on alienation, individual loneliness and dead ends, the conflict between society and the individual, monotonous lives, class differences, and individuals struggling with the crises of the modern world. The titles of the stories are as follows: “There Is No Place to Run”, “The Scent of My Dreams’ Rose”, “I Should Have Seen You”, “Are You Hopeful?”, “KOrKU^【1】”, “To Be Able to Live”, “Midnight Half-Night”, “Once in Samatya…”, “What I Could Touch”, “Passion”, “The Two Hundred and Seventeenth or Nobody”, “Deli Gömleği”.

Published when the author was in his thirties and his first story collection, Deli Gömleği is filled with the anxieties brought by the modern world and the characters who endure them. Hopeless and painful loves, loneliness, uncertainty, alienation, the desire to escape, hüzün, murder, suicide, and death are central elements in the book. The work also contains criticism of the era and society, and is rich with characters overwhelmed by alienation and the burdens of modernity.

Moreover, the stories depict phenomena such as Western admiration, extreme materialism, rupture from tradition, and drowning in modernity.

Although no specific time is explicitly stated in the stories, based on the themes and critiques presented, it can be concluded that the events take place in the 21st century. Most of the stories are set in Istanbul.