"The Applicant" by Nazli Koca is a compelling novel that delves into themes of displacement, identity, and belonging through the story of Leyla, a young Turkish immigrant in Berlin. Koca's vivid depiction of Berlin enriches the narrative, capturing the city's multicultural vibrancy and Leyla's struggles within it. The novel explores Leyla's internal and external challenges with raw honesty, highlighting her vulnerability and resilience as she navigates bureaucratic obstacles and personal conflicts. Koca skillfully intertwines Leyla's past in Turkey with her present, creating a poignant and thought-provoking exploration of identity and the search for acceptance. This debut showcases Koca's talent for storytelling and her deep understanding of the immigrant experience.

This is such a strong debut. This writing was excellent, there is some great humor, some thought-provoking material, and some really unlikeable characters. I love books with a lot of gray area, and I think this one fits the bill.

DNF, I couldn't get through this one. The premise was so interesting but the execution felt like a blog about Berlin meets the diary of an edgy teenager.

This book had a really compelling premise that grabbed my attention from the start. The narrator, Leyla, is a young Turkish writer living in Berlin on a student visa. After failing out of her program, she faces a bureaucratic nightmare as her immigration status is threatened. She gets a job as a cleaner in a gross youth hostel and spends her spare time partying, reading, and writing in her journal (this novel). She is torn between her pull back to her family and home country and her dreams and aspirations, while trying to navigate the Kafkaesque immigration system and stay in the country.

Ultimately, my attention started to wane over the course of the book; based on the premise I wanted to like this book much more than I did. The diary format felt a bit contrived (though it was plausible that a would-be writer would procrastinate her own fiction writing by keeping a meticulous journal), and the writing was at times clunky and lacked finesse, often overexplaining the "moral of the story" once the point had already been illustrated through an anecdote.

This is clearly a gifted writer with a lot to say, and I'll be interested to see what she comes out with next.

The ominous cover resembles a popular tale retold many times. Let the Right One In his a vampire novel and movie. A vampire cannot enter unless they are invited. In Nazli Kocha's novel, The Applicant, immigrants are treated the same way as vampires who only seek to drain a country's resources. Of course, the true story is that they are the lifeblood in which a community can thrive. We have stopped seeing things that way, as this book explores.

In Berlin, on a student visa, her final thesis is rejected, and she is forced to appeal with the university and in German courts. She has only months to find a way to stay in the country. Forced to subsist as a cleaner, she also tries to obliterate herself with drugs, alcohol, and dancing, as we see how she and others survive in a country that clearly does not want them.

I love how this story raises important issues about the struggles of immigration, being stereotyped and finding respect for being your own individual self. The author wrote this in a light hearted manner amidst the serious topics discussed here.

I can’t help but root for Leyla, the main protagonist as she navigates through her struggles. I really enjoyed reading her monologue at the end.

Thank you netgalley and Grove Atlantic for the arc.

My full review can be accessed on https://readingundertheolivetree.com/2023/03/26/dear-europe-i-promise-im-not-staying/

Leyla is a young Turkish writer in her twenties who is stuck in bureaucratic limbo waiting for an extension on her student visa in Berlin. Through its intimate epistolary format, the novel allows readers to access Leyla’s raw and unfiltered thoughts as she grapples with the existential questions that confront her in her current predicament. Should she remain in Berlin, the city she has come to love? Or should she return to Turkey to pursue her writing career there in a politically unstable context? Should she sacrifice her values and marry her Swedish boyfriend to secure her place in Europe? These are just a few of the difficult choices that Leyla must face, each of which presents its own set of trials and tribulations. Regardless of the path she chooses, she realizes, there is no easy way out.

Leyla is a protagonist I have been seeking in Anglophone migration novels for a long time: a character on the move that disrupts the neatly-packaged categories of “refugee” and “migrant.” (The first one I found was Elif Shafak’s Ömer Sipahioğlu in The Saint of Incipient Insanities (2004) ). Leyla cannot be categorized as a refugee according to international refugee law; she is not escaping persecution or an active war as defined by the 1951 Convention drafted by the UN. Nor is she an economic migrant, “a person who leaves their country of origin purely for economic reasons that are not in any way related to the refugee definition, in order to seek material improvements in their livelihood,” according to the European Commission. Instead, as an international student on a study visa with a complicated visa status, she is given a Fiktionbescheinigung (fictional certificate), a “fictional visa” that doesn’t afford her many rights. We see here an important critique of the political and social structures that underpin the migration experience, encouraging readers to engage in a deeper reflection on the ways in which these structures can impact the lives of individuals like Leyla who do not fit into established categories.

The Applicant's premise had me expecting a feisty protagonist, suing a Berlin university for failing her thesis and subsequently at risk of losing her visa. Through diary entries, we are privy to the thoughts and activities of 27-year-old Leyla. Other reviewers have slotted this novel into the 'Disaster Woman' category. Like how every family is terrible in its own way (Tolstoy), how and why precisely these women disintegrate is unique. I've given this matter a fair amount of thought, especially for female protagonists suffering from complex PTSD. How difficult it is to explain and tease out individual factors, how outwardly the ways of coping may be judged and frowned upon, who is deemed worthy of sympathy and supports.

Back to The Applicant, whose title refers to one of Sylvia Plath's works, I will straightforwardly admit at being taken aback by the 'messiness' of Leyla's life and her escapist forays. She is rather evasive to boot, called a black box teasingly in Turkish by her sister and often can't bear to scrutinize how her life has become contrary to her hopes and expectations when she first arrived in Germany. She wants to become a published writer and yet now she is a cleaner at an ironic Alice in Wonderland themed hostel. Her thesis was on the lives of Turkish immigrants in Germany and her crusty German professor fails her without a second thought. She is acutely aware that her host country expects her to be eager and grateful, as well as the repression that artists and other dissidents face back in Turkey.

Progressing through the book, Leyla's numerous pressures and past traumas, her busy brain trying to figure out solutions and seek comfort even while sleeping made me really feel for her. She is clearly very intelligent and well-read, we find out that she had a privileged upbringing until an enormous change in family circumstances. Her father became an alcoholic, physically abused her mother so in her diary, we can see her deeply care and shaken when she encounters instances of domestic abuse. She took part in Istanbul protests but was in Germany when the Gezi park protests and military coup happened. Even though she wasn't there physically, the images and videos affected her greatly. Her mother and sister call her incessantly, she is aware how much is riding on her being successful. Leyla also rails against the 'capitalist patriarchy,' racism and hypocrisy of Western countries.

As this is an ARC, the publisher has requested that we refrain from quoting until checked against the published version. I have highlighted many sections in this book and will return to post quotes once the published book is obtained. Leyla has a wicked, black humour, a quick overthinking mind and compassion for those doing whatever they have to in order to survive. She has a huge array of friends with very different backgrounds, all with their own issues. My only criticism with a diary format is that it feels like quite a lot of details spelled out when normally if writing for oneself, probably wouldn't need to explain so many things one presumably already knows. There's some meta to it because Leyla gets some buzz with reading snippets of her diary which are getting accepted for publication in a journal and could be turned into a book named The Applicant. This is cold comfort to Leyla in achieving some recognition of her writing because time on her visa is running out. There's a sense of urgency and anxiety permeating her and the novel.

Whether it's self-sabotage, or repression and cruelty in her home country, guilt over her father's crimes, discrimination and white nationalism, it's fair to say the odds were stacked against Leyla. So contrary to my initial impression, I came to see her as a survivor, as someone who still cares deeply about others, who can't turn off her brain from engaging, who doesn't have the luxury of turning away from all these issues because it impacts her and people around her. There is a glimmer of realistic hope at the end.

Thanks to Grove Atlantic Press and Netgalley for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review. The Applicant's publication date is 14th February 2023.

It’s time for a new review! 🥰

The Applicant is about a young Turkish woman named Leyla who lives in Berlin and is at risk of losing her student visa and being sent home after she failed her master’s thesis. She works at an Alice in Wonderland themed hostel as a cleaner and spends her free time partying. Her goal is to become a writer one day. The story is told through journal entries so it’s very character focused and the reader learns a lot about Leyla’s views on society, her family history, and her thoughts in general.

The main thing that made me enjoy this book is that I really really related to Leyla. She’s an unlikable person and an unreliable narrator, but I connected with her experiences and thoughts surrounding life as a graduate student in a country that’s richer than her own. I’m not Turkish so there’s a lot about her history at home that I don’t relate to, but when she wrote about her complex feelings towards Germany and Turkey I completely understood and connected with everything she said. Leyla’s thoughts about class, nationality, gender, and other social issues were scattered among stories about her wild choices and silly interactions with other people. That balance kept The Applicant from ever feeling either devastatingly heavy or inappropriately lighthearted in relation to the topics it covers. I always enjoy and respect when an author is able to find that balance.

I love to read books that simply follow the main character’s daily life, their feelings, and their perspectives. This is that kind of book. I appreciate when an author can make me care about (or at least not hate reading about) the main character’s love life, and I didn’t mind reading about Layla’s romantic life at all.

I had a nice time reading The Applicant. I was already confident going in that I would like it, and it was exactly what I expected it to be. I don’t really have any specific complaints, but it didn’t amaze me and it was very easy for me to put it down for days without thinking or caring about it. That’s why I have to give it four stars instead of 5.
Also that random sentence about Lolita was weird. I didn’t like it.

This is a very straightforward book, so I think that if this review sounds good to you you will probably like this book. I also think that you should read The Applicant if you’re typically a fan of the “twenty-something year old woman struggling” genre.

I didnt really enjoy this book. It had a lot of filler involving drug use that I'm at an age where I just consider it tiresome although it did fit the age profile that Layla our protoganist is supposed to be. Maybe I'm alone in thinking reading about drug use is very boring, especially when it's not particularly well written. That said, there are other things going on with this book, that escape the somewhat poor writing.

Layla works as a cleaner while waiting for her visa status to be approved and is in a bind. Be a full blown refugee or struggle on? Anyway, out of nowhere she meets a Swedish guy who pretty much can become her saviour. Another book about women who are saved by men, yay.

Published by Grove Press on February 14, 2023

The Applicant takes the form of Leyla's diary. Leyla believes that autobiographies are always embellished with fiction. Why not disguise her life as fiction, changing only the names of the innocent? Yet she wonders whether it is possible both to live and narrate a life without subjecting either the life or the narrative to censorship. If Leyla is censoring her life, she is at least letting the reader see the good parts.

The “my novel is my life” premise only works when lives are interesting or characters have something to say. Leyla has something to say about just how uninteresting her life is and how helpless she is to find productive ways to escape the drudgery. Oddly enough, the drudgery of her life turns out to be interesting.

Leyla’s life is filled with the drama of a young unattached woman who feels out of place. Leyla is from Turkey but she’s living in Berlin, making immigration — invisible borders and the arbitrary documents required to cross them — a prominent theme. Leyla needs funds to renew her student visa, but she can only do that if she wins her appeal after being kicked out of the university for writing a thesis that “wasn’t academic enough.” She also needs to hold a job to convince the German government that she can support herself legally.

There has recently been a coup in Turkey and Leyla doesn’t want to return to live under a dictatorship, but if she stays in Germany by claiming refugee status she won’t be able to go home to visit her family. Conversely, if she returns to Turkey — where her debt-ridden mother and sister are staying with her aunt — she will only qualify for a minimum wage job and will never save enough money to return to Germany.

The story addresses discrimination against Turks in Germany, particularly in academia. The professor who failed Leyla is notorious for passing every student without reading their shoddy theses, but he held Leyla to a higher standard. She is bitter that she must be either “a perfect student or a poor refugee” to remain in the country. To be fair, however, Leyla was far from a perfect student.

Leyla wants to be a writer but doesn’t want to write “the kind of book that gets one’s family’s home raided by the police.” She earns a reputation by interviewing minor celebrities in front of small Berlin audiences but the celebrities take all the entrance fees. She parties and hangs out with Aria, an unpublished writer, and with Victor, her gay Cuban roommate, and with Mona, who defies description.

Leyla’s friend Defne suggested that Leyla replace her in the the job Defne was leaving at a hostel, but didn’t mention that it was a cleaning job. Leyla cleans by day, hoarding half-empty bottles of alcohol that guests leave behind, and by night visits clubs and gets messed up on alcohol, weed, and ketamine. She sleeps with guys at random.

Female sexuality is a central theme. Mona suggests that Leyla earn extra income as an escort, since she might as well be paid if she wants random sexual encounters. Leyla writes memories in her diary of working with Mona for a couple of months when she should have been focusing on her thesis. Having been exploited by men throughout her life, Leyla is astonished to learn how easy it is to take money from them.

Leyla considers the hypocrisy of men who regard sex and money as the ultimate prizes in life but make it illegal for women to have sex for money. She wonders why women are expected to earn their equality by beating men at their own game after centuries of providing domestic labor for free, when it is so much easier to change the rules and gain power through sex. At the same time, she comes to regard the commodification of her sexuality as socially paralyzing.

As Leyla is waiting for her visa status to resolve, she initiates a sexual encounter with a Swedish Volvo salesman who picks her up in a Berlin bar. When she visit him in Sweden, she tries to convince herself that she isn’t using him as she contemplates living a middle class, Ikea-furnished life. Maybe she even loves him, although she thought the same about Mona. Yet the Swede doesn’t share her liberal philosophy. He doesn’t read or think deeply. He is always calm while Leyla is a tight bundle of anxiety. Perhaps their personalities are too dissimilar to make a relationship work.

The novel’s limited drama lies in the choices Leyla must make. Should she marry the Swede? He’s handsome and attentive and kind. Her mother thinks a handsome Swede who has a job is a perfect choice. To live with the Swede, Leyla would need to abandon her “adventurous writer’s life,” perhaps losing the only material she can find that’s worth writing about. She would also need to live in Turkey while awaiting a Swedish residential visa. Yet her other choices — returning to school, finding a decent job that is consistent with her visa restrictions — are largely beyond her control. Perhaps a return to Turkey and a career writing advertising copy is her fate. She feels that she is on the verge of making a terrible mistake but does not know which choice will be the mistake. That’s life in a nutshell.

Late entries hint that Leyla might find at least modest success as a writer. Whether she will make the right choice about her life is up in the air. The ending has a coming of age moment — a realization that it’s time to grow up — that seems forced. Maybe a transition to maturity is expected in the story of a young person’s life, but Leyla’s life is interesting precisely because she’s not sufficiently mature to make good decisions. I liked Leyla because she put maturity on hold. It’s only when partying and a dead-end job get old that Leyla predictably decides to face reality. Okay, that’s nice, but predictable behavior doesn’t make for compelling fiction. Still, getting to know Leyla before she reaches her turning point is worth a reader’s time.

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Where do I start?

I think I would have enjoyed this book more if the MC wasn't Turkish. I am Turkish and I chose to reside in the USA but not because Turkey was such a terrible place to live. My whole family is there and I visit my native country often.

I tried to stay objective while reading but I couldn't relate to Leyla in any way and couldn't help but feel that this book was written for the Western reader to say, "poor Turkish writer"

The main character Leyla,27, lives in a self imposed exile in Germany. She has a love-hate relationship with Berlin. Berlin is edgy and artsy and alive and that is exactly how Leyla wants to feel. But her life is nowhere near where she wants to be. Her visa is about to expire because she failed her thesis and was kicked out of her graduate program, she works as a cleaner to make ends meet, she is often high on ketamine or cocaine, she wants to make it as an author, as an artist, she "only attaches herself to people who were en route to the exit from the beginning" and she has a delicate relationship with her mom and sister back in Turkey. About 40% of the story she meets a conservative Swede and her life gets even more complicated because this steady, dependable guy is not who she sees herself with. In her exact words: "What about the adventurous writer's life I've risked so much to create for myself? Don't I deserve to be with someone who reads, writes, or at least thinks like me?" 

I liked the format that the story is told: short journal entries. It is very intimate. It almost feels like Leyla opens herself to the reader in her journal and doesn't hold back. She shows all her imperfections, her doubts about herself and her craft and her regrets. She also shares stories about her many friends, most of them immigrants like her. 

I enjoyed reading the Turkish phrases sprinkled here and there. While I wasn't happy with her throwing her native country under the bus for the sake of being called radical or brave, I think she had a few things right: Mainly the xenophobia immigrants face in Europe. The way Germans have trouble fitting these young, educated Turks to the image of Turks in their minds especially in academia. (You need to know a little about Turkish immigration to Germany starting in the 1970s. They were employed mainly in the service industry, working in manual jobs, seen as second class citizens for decades. Germany has the second highest Turkish population) 

At its core this is part a stream-of-consciousness story and part late coming-of-age story. It is about the immigrant experience, about a sense of belonging, about the secrets you hide and the toll it takes on you. If you put aside my personal bias towards the characters nationality, The Applicant was a highly readable literary fiction piece. It is relatively short, under 300 pages. I think the author has a unique voice. I wish the ending wasn't ambiguous.

𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗔𝗣𝗣𝗟𝗜𝗖𝗔𝗡𝗧 by debut author Nazli Koca is a most unusual, most disquieting coming-of-age story. It’s narrated by Leyla, a young Turkish woman who’s been living on a student visa in Berlin for the last five years. Leyla loves Berlin. She loves her friends, partying, the art scene, the ease and quantity of drugs there, the fact that it’s not Turkey. But, Leyla is about to lose her visa. Her Master’s thesis has been rejected and unless her appeal changes that decision, Leyla cannot stay in Germany.⁣
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This is a bit of a stream-of-consciousness story as Leyla lays out what is happening in her life in an almost day-by-day, hour-by-hour way. At times that got to be a little much. So many different people popped in and out of her story that it was a tad confusing and topic changes were often quite abrupt. At first, I was put off by the writing style, but after about 20% I settled into it, enjoying Leyla’s bizarre journey. Would I have liked to see fewer dreams? Yes. Do I wish the ending was a little clearer? Yes. Am I glad I read The Applicant? Yes! ⭐️⭐️⭐️💫⁣
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Thanks to @groveatlantic for a finished copy of #TheApplicant.

There's a strange but refreshing perspective that this book offers through the Disaster Woman protagonist in the way that she pulls out the strands of politics and patriarchy and mixes it with the life of a Turkish immigrant in Berlin. It's a quick read, given how intense it can get. And it can be pretty off-kilter, given that it is told as diary entries. I was confused more than I can recollect at the sudden jerks in narrative and wished that despite it all, it TOLD a story and didn't just dump a bunch of facts and expect the reader to put it together or expect it to magically come together. Plus that ending felt so jarring that despite me knowing what the point of the book is, I found myself asking, rather irritatedly, "What is the point?" And yet, I won't take away the credit that is due to the author. She has made compelling political points, enlightening us as the book goes about politics in Türkiye and of that in Berlin while pitting immigrant life against the stark canvas of cultures conditioned to treat immigrants as the 'other'.

Would still recommend this book!

A lovely, short read that is both propulsive and thought provoking, making you want to race through reading it while also wanting to stop and ruminate on it.

The endearing Layla, our protagonist is a Turkish immigrant to Berlin hoping to attain more permanent residency, yet endlessly mired in the many obstacles that makes it so difficult to obtain foreign residency, particularly for those from certain parts of the world.

More generally it’s also an interesting look into the trials and tribulations of living abroad, especially in a place where you don’t look quite like everyone else.

Though the book deals with some heavy themes (racism, immigration, drug use, sex work), the author deploys a light touch that deftly infuses Leyla’s journey with humor and wry observation, even in its darker moments.

This feels a little like Other People’s Clothes in terms of tone and because both books are set in Berlin. A bit like Happy Hour too, in its more humorous moments. I loved the blend of weighty themes and though provoking situations with humor and hopefulness.

Thanks to NetGalley and Grove Atlantic for this read, The Applicant. This book was raw. A real eye opener. I kept wanting to read it and listen to it as I had both the audio and eARC for this read. I would recommend.

3.5 stars ⭐️ This is a debut novel about a Turkish immigrant who shares her personal ups and downs. The writing style is very honest, refreshing and different. It kept me wanting to pick it up to see where her journey took her. Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for a honest review.

It’s 2017 and Leyla, a Turkish twentysomething living in Berlin, is scrubbing toilets at an Alice in Wonderland–themed hostel after failing her thesis, losing her student visa, and suing her German university in a Kafkaesque attempt to reverse her fate. She spends her nights in clubs drinking and doing drugs, then meets a Swedish tourist who falls in love with her and wants her to move to Sweden. With time running out on her visa, she needs to decide if she is willing to take that step, or go back to Turkey and the life she hated.
I have mixed emotions on this book. It was good, but as the book was written in diary form, and Leyla didn't seem to learn anything from her mistakes or grow any in the book, it felt repetitive. I felt bad for her but was frustrated when she failed to learn and grow. I know this was the point of the book, but it was just frustrating to read.

My thanks to NetGalley, Grove Atlantic and the author Nazli Koca for an advanced reader’s copy. In this book we follow Leyla; a Turkish immigrant who aspires to be a writer but faces many difficulties, including problems with her professor at university, a job that consists of scrubbing toilets and cleaning bedrooms in a hostile and her soon to expire visa. In this literary debut novel Koca comes face to face with the reality of immigration and identity crisis. What it feels like to be away from the home you grew up in and your family and live the life you dreamed of living. A life that isn’t what you were looking for. Leyla finds herself compelled to snatch at the meager chances that life offer and cleverly analyzes her status and situation. This calls for a rearrangement of priorities and she finds herself thinking of events that occurred in the past that changed her life forever; events that if she can undo her life would be better. Overall, this is a literary piece worth the read.

I really liked aspects of this book, in particular, the commentary on immigration but I had an overall hard time getting invested in the character. Maybe it was the diary style of writing which ultimately didn't vibe with me, but overall a solid book.

Thank you to Netgalley and Grove Atlantic for sending me an advanced copy.