Kaya Genç is the author of The Lion and the Nightingale, an account of happenings and conversations in 2017 in Istanbul and around Turkey and stories of the lives of all kinds of people from different social strata, the year after the 2016 coup attempt. His other books are Under the Shadow: Rage and Revolution in Modern Turkey (2016), An Istanbul Anthology, and in Turkish, Macera, a novel that has yet to be translated into English.

We talked about recent Turkish history, life under the rule of strongman Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and what the United States might learn from Turks, young and old.

The Rhyming Chaos podcast is produced by Jeremy Goldkorn and Maria Repnikova, and edited by Cadre Scripts. The theme music is Paper Boy, composed and performed on the guzheng by Wu Fei. Our closing music is Erik Satie’s Gymnopédie No. 1, arranged and performed by Wu Fei. Our cover art is by Li Yunfei.

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