Sepin Sinanlıoğlu

The Lord of the Laments

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There is no such thing as forgetting. That’s a big lie.

There are invisible bloodstains on Lady Macbeth’s hands. Even though nobody sees them, those stains are there. I look at my hands. They are stained with blood. The stains are not wiped off when they are not seen. It is not forgotten when it is forgotten. Ones who forget cannot forget. Ones who don’t see, nail it down somewhere. 

There is no such thing as forgetting. That’s a big lie.

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The Lord of the Laments is an unflinching account of Sepin Sinanlıoğlu’s first two years coping with the death of her husband, Okan İnceer who died in a mountaineering accident. While addressing her own experiences, telling her never-ending love story, and writing about both the existential and mundane aspects of her very own mourning, Sepin Sinanlıoğlu composes a love letter which twists into a lamentation, not an individual, but a collective one. By assembling various forms such as memoir, fiction, and essay, the author depicts a heart-wrenching panorama of Turkey, memorizing the children who were killed during the various clashes in the country. The Lord of the Laments is a new kind of narrative and a bold call to build up a collective memory.