The New Divine Comedy

A novel as divine as Dante's Divine Comedy and as diabolical as Goethe's Faust by Bedrettin Simsek, the banned author of Turkish literature. When it was published in 1998 under the title "The Discussion between an Atheist and a Cleric," Bedrettin Simsek and the publishing house were sentenced to two years in prison for insulting religious values. This sentence was suspended on the condition that they would not commit the same offense again. As a result, Bedrettin Simsek was ostracized from the literary world. Fearing the reaction of readers or punishment, publishers closed their doors to him. In the end, he was turned into a cursed writer, whose name no one would ever speak again..
Reminiscent of a comic version of Dante's Divine Comedy and its antithesis, the work begins with an intellectual conflict between a dying atheist and a cleric, then takes the reader on a dizzying journey through the landscapes of Purgatory, Heaven, and Hell. By creating a post-mortem in which the sinners enter heaven first and the good can fall into hell, the book deserves the title "The New Divine Comedy. The work not only reveals the genius of Bedrettin Simsek, but also gives the reader an opportunity to understand the nature of the ban imposed on him for years in the literary and publishing circles of Turkey.

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