good company and a good read

Yesterday I met the very hip, very cool Aurél de Saint André— winner of the first Fluevog Creative competition, who just happens to live in Istanbul. Aurél is himself a nomad, having lived in places like Afghanistan and Thailand, and is a talented designer— his site is full of yummy logos and posters I recommend checking out. We spent the early afternoon wandering around the backstreets of Beyoğlu, hopping in and out of the many, many hidden antique shops.



We parted ways after a kebap and some çay, and I headed off to a café to start reading my first book of 2010— Fatelessness by Imre Kertész. Throughout my adventure in Budapest, I had been searching for a book by a great Hungarian writer to take home with me, and Mirco had suggested I find something by Nobel Prize winner Imre Kertész. At some point in the trip, I had run out of money, and decided to put his books on my holiday wishlist. Lucky lucky me, my mother gave me not one, but three of his books: Fatelessness, Kaddish for an Unborn Child, and Liquidation.

I could not put it down. By the time I reached the hundredth page, my coffee was ice-cold and the sun was nowhere to be found. Fatelessness is about a fourteen year old Hungarian boy who is unexpectedly picked up and sent off to Auschwitz. I felt as though I was seeing, feeling and thinking through this boy— as this boy. I've been walking around all day with the sensation of being trapped in the book, and I can't wait to get back to it.