Root & Branch

<p><em style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0)>I have come to see that I am an argumentative person who is frequently convinced that my angle my take on a matter is the right one. This kind of delusional self-belief is not rewarded in many other spheres of social life so I write essays. </em></p><p>There is a Turkish saying that one's home is not where one is born but where one grows full - do?du?un yer de?il doydu?un yer. Exquisitely written <em style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0)>Root & Branch</em> unsettles neat descriptions of inheritance belonging and place. Eda Gunaydin's essays ask: what are the legacies of migration apart from loss? And how do we find comfort in where we are? </p><p><strong style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0)>'In</strong> <strong style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0)><em>Root & Branch</em> Eda Gunaydin's essays showcase the fine craft of a writer whose seemingly dispassionate observations set a wide stage for astute deeply considered reflections on place people politics and power. It takes immense skill to weave personal narratives seamlessly into broader conversations and complex social commentary. To do so in an effortless manner as Gunaydin has accomplished is pure alchemy. This is a book I will revisit many times for both the beauty of its language and for the generous opportunities to think and learn alongside the writer. A moving thought-provoking and truly stunning debut.' - Eileen Chong</strong></p><p><strong style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0)>'<em>Root & Branch</em> is a book of autobiographical essays that pay careful attention to in Gunaydin's words the materiality of living: sore feet varicose veins fast food and other everyday events in working-class life. It is also funny self-deprecating self-dramatising and hopeful: a searching and multi-faceted debut.' - Anwen Crawford</strong></p><p><strong style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0)>'Gunaydin's work and it is work lands with a deceptive lightness on the page and its readers. Its weight grows on us over time - reminders of the daily inheritance of trauma responsibility and structures over which we can only sometimes wrest control. Forget vital or necessary.</strong> <strong style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0)><em>Root & Branch</em> is knowing and real. In every essay Eda circles something much bigger than the sum of her experience and thought as both witness and participant in which we as readers are left guessing our place.' - Alison Whittaker</strong></p><p><strong style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0)>'What has always struck me about Eda Gunaydin's essays is their remarkable and balanced movement the deft way they bring together a fierce intelligence and political consciousness with a depth and complexity of feeling as well as a wicked sense of humour and of the absurd. They are forthright and passionate but also playful cynical and sharp and keenly interested in all of the ordinary ways that extraordinary historical and social forces are felt across our lives and what it means to both bear and resist their weight.' - Fiona Wright</strong></p><p><strong style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0)>'Gunaydin is a gifted essayist driven by an honest desire to see society transformed to alter the conditions of everyday existence so that there's nothing that we need to be saved from. Gunaydin's ability to combine a searing intellect with wit and ingenuity is breathtaking.' -<em> Books+Publishing</em></strong></p><p><br></p>