Hollandalı Göçmen Yazar Murat Işık’tan Bir Göç ve Kültürlenme Romanı: Verloren Grond (Kayıp Toprak)
A Migration and Acculturation Novel from the Dutch Immigrant Author Murat Işık: Verloren Grond (Lost Ground)

Summary/Abstract: Since ancient times, hunger, drought, animosity or the search for better education caused people to leave their lands and go to other places or other countries. Inevitably, these types of moves bring the phenomenon of culture to the fore. This article discusses how the Zaza /Alevi born Dutch writer Murat Işık, who witnessed emigration from Turkey to The Netherlands, deals with the factors of internal migration in his novel Verloren Grond (Lost Ground), which bears traces of his family’s biography. In the work, migration of the Uslu family brings to the agenda feelings, hopes and disappointments of family members. The novel is examined with the aid of both the push-pull model of migration and pushing and pulling factors leading to migration. The most important pushing factor in the novel is the father’s leg amputation. The ground inherited from his father is thought to be the only pulling factor for the family because it will provide them with economic salvation. The phenomenon of land is very important for human beings because it represents ancestral heritage, belongingness, identity and freedom. The second important pushing factor is an earthquake, which triggers the idea of going to the big city as a pulling factor. After the migrations, the members of the family experience various types of social and cultural adaptation problems. Thus, through the novel we realize that the phenomena of migration are economically, socially and culturally important for the Uslu family, and consequently have positive and negative results for each individual.

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