Son of a Dog

Shortlisted for the ZDF »aspekte« Literary Prize 2025

An explosive literary debut

»This novel will break your heart – and yet, it makes you want to love like Zeko does, just once in your life.« Mithu Sanyal

This is a love story. It’s set in June, in July, in August, in Adana, three thousand kilometres away from Berlin. Berlin is where Zeko lives. In Berlin, he meets men in parks and cafés, on Grindr, and outside the mosque. But every time their lips meet, his mind takes him straight back to Hassan, the boy next door in Adana, who Dede, his grandfather, always called a »son of a dog«. Zeko only knows that noisy neighbourhood and the dust in the alleyways from his summer holidays. Then Dede dies of a heart attack. But Zeko doesn’t want to forget. Not his grandfather, who cut the worries out of old men’s beards and sang in Arabic, not the religious rituals and the taste of bamya. And certainly not Hassan.

»In nine days, I will see Hassan again«, he repeats like a mantra: at Friday prayers, at therapy, at the pool, at lunch with his best friend Pari. But something happened the last time Zeko and Hassan saw each other. Something that keeps surging to the surface with a force that grows stronger with each passing day, as he approaches the date of his return to Adana. Son of a Dog tells a story of love and desire in a radical, poetic way.

A story about the euphoria and vulnerability of loving someone, about the fear and the joy. About quiet cries and loud whispers: at the kitchen table, in stranger’s beds, at prayer time. And in the process, it surveys our fractured present, transcending all the borders between countries, languages, and bodies.

»If your expectation of literature is that it not only describes new realities but also gives expression to them, transforms them into language, then you have a rare example here: in the novel Son of a Dog by the 35-year-old author Ozan Zakariya Keskinkiliç, the most surprising debut of this autumn.« Gustav Seibt, Süddeutsche Zeitung

»Son of a Dog is one of the strongest German-language debuts of the year. How the jury of the German Book Prize managed to overlook it in their nominations will remain one of the mysteries of the literary branch. Hopefully, that will do nothing to hinder Keskinkılıç’s success.« Nadine Lange, Tagesspiegel

»Young contemporary Germany literature – all well and good, but internationally, nobody has the slightest interest in our provincial navel-gazing. … [A] cosmopolitan flair runs through the exciting debut novel by the queer, Muslim, Ozan Zakariya Keskinkılıç, whose life began unspectacularly enough in a village in Hesse. Son of a Dog is the name of this smutty and entertaining book, which is gender-fluid and sophisticated, open and awfully amusing.« Jan Drees, Deutschlandfunk

»A book that you can easily read in a day. But that you won’t get out of your head quite so easily.« Moritz Vogt, Die Rheinpfalz

»A powerful, slow burn of a novel that captures the ache of missed connections and the joy of redemption.« New Books in German

»In this work, vulnerability and longing are transformed into great literature. And everything is redolent of oranges and salt.« Dinçer Güçyeter, winner of the Leipzig Book Fair Prize

»This is the most tender and clever novel about love, friendship, and desire for a long time – you wish the story would never end.« Martina Hefter, winner of the German Book Prize