The 80th Step

Korkut Laçin lies in hospital, arguably in a coma, certainly with three bullets inside him. Who put them there, and why? And just who is this man? With an idiosyncratic flashback structure involving both the reminiscences of state investigators' interviewees and Korkut's own memories, we painstakingly unravel a history involving childhood at an orphanage, a 1975 burnt-down chemistry lab, flight abroad, 1978 capture in Bangkok, protracted torture by the Turkish military authorities, and various unexplained phenomena. The net result is unexpectedly wacky: partly because of the impenetrability of the drama, partly because of the strange fascination of its enigmatic central figure, a man 'just more ordinary than others', says his ex-lover, but also hard and lonely, a man who alienates his old friends with his deadpan fearlessness, but who seems to have picked up an inscrutable chip on his shoulder somewhere along the way.