Esin Şenol's novel makes a splash in the literary world

In this period of time where we are forced to get used to a new situation every day, where even breathing becomes difficult and our spaces of freedom are restricted, the greatest savior is to take refuge in our own harbor. To catch our breath, purify ourselves, and return to the struggle stronger than before.

Prof. Dr. Esin Şenol, an infectious diseases specialist whom we came to know during the pandemic, retreated to her own harbor for a while after two difficult pandemic years. Shedding the shields she had donned one by one, she stepped into the literary world with her first novel. It is such a shedding that her literary spirit—which she describes as something she "penned at a difficult crossroads in my life" and from which she shares notes of an overflowing desire to write—enters our dark corridors and establishes a relationship of confidant with the reader. 

As a reader who never missed Esin's pandemic writings, which had a literary flair, and as a friend who knows her passion for writing, I read “Ay Işığıyla Yıkanan Kadınlar” (Women Bathed in Moonlight).

The characters felt so familiar that I couldn't help but ask: Is this an autobiographical novel? Who is the "bluebeard" literary figure in the novel? 

Inevitably, the reader wonders about the real-life heroes behind the intriguing fictional characters. 

It has such a beautiful structure and a bold language that the master physician of the infectious disease world shows that she is also a powerful pen in literature with the questions she confronts the reader with. 

The heroines of her novel are women who have lifted the veil from their eyes, who have not bowed to what exists, but have chosen to create their own existence! 

“Partings without farewells, friends who are keepers of memories bound by sisterhood, Anais Nin and Lawrence Durrell, and that melancholic city of Ankara, which always makes me want to run away while simultaneously binding me to itself!”

Before the pandemic times gripped us, we didn't know Esin Şenol. She went through difficult times herself during the pandemic storm and was threatened with death. She managed to bring her ship to the harbor during the storm, and by healing her wounds through writing, she said "I am here too" in the literary world with a wonderful novel!

Ay Işığıyla Yıkanan Kadınlar! 

A novel written to illuminate the darkness covering women. With her incurable optimism, it is written so sincerely that it tells women to 'tear that veil with your own hands.' It sets out from three dissimilar female protagonists. There are also stories distilled from her own life journey. Which one is real? Which one is fiction? While I couldn't help but ask these questions, there were also parts where I couldn't help but laugh. 

Experiencing both peace and restlessness in the same person, wanting to run away while being stuck there out of conscience… You remember the purgatories of youth once again, and while reading the book, you experience a carnival of contrasts. 

The novel's characters are very familiar. Women who live life like a journey and know how to heal their wounds. The author herself is one of those women. She went through all sorts of trials and, as a brave and outspoken scientist, did not give up on her cause. And now, she shows that literature is not a distraction that makes us forget death, but on the contrary, it embraces us with our mortality and records our transience.

Esin Şenol enters the literary world with a bold statement.