How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps from Democracy to Fascism

by Ece Temelkuran

Overview

How to Lose a Country is a warning to the world that populism and nationalism don’t march fully-formed into government; they creep.

Award-winning author and journalist Ece Temelkuran identifies the early warning signs of this phenomenon, sprouting up across the world from Eastern Europe to South America, in order to arm the reader with the tools to recognise it and take action.

Weaving memoir, history and clear-sighted argument, Temelkuran proposes alternative answers to the pressing – and too often paralysing – political questions of our time. How to Lose a Country is an exploration of the insidious ideas at the core of these movements and an urgent, eloquent defence of democracy.

This 2024 edition includes a new foreword by the author.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781837263080
Publisher:	Canongate Canons
Publication date:	10/10/2024
Series:	Canons
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	304
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Ece Temelkuran is an award-winning Turkish writer, political thinker and public speaker whose work has been published worldwide. Her novels, Women Who Blow on Knots and The Time of Mute Swans, have been published in several languages and adapted to the stage. Temelkuran’s two political essays, Deep Mountain: Across the Armenian–Turkish Divide and Turkey: The Insane and Melancholy, explore the connection between the personal and political. After she left her country in 2016, Temelkuran began writing in English. Her first book in this language, How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps from Democracy to Fascism, received international praise. Her second, Together: A Manifesto Against a Heartless World offers 'a way out from the political and moral insanity' that is ushered by the global rise of fascism. Ece Temelkuran has lived in Beirut, Tunis, Oxford, Paris and Zagreb. She is currently based in Berlin and is on the advisory board of Progressive International and DemocracyNext.

ecetemelkuran.net | @ETemelkuran | @ece.temelkuran

Ece Temelkuran is an award-winning Turkish writer, political thinker and public speaker whose work has been published worldwide. Her novels, Women Who Blow on Knots and The Time of Mute Swans, have been published in several languages and adapted to the stage. Temelkuran’s two political essays, Deep Mountain: Across the Armenian–Turkish Divide and Turkey: The Insane and Melancholy, explore the connection between the personal and political. After she left her country in 2016, Temelkuran began writing in English. Her first book in this language, How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps from Democracy to Fascism, received international praise. Her second, Together: A Manifesto Against a Heartless World offers 'a way out from the political and moral insanity' that is ushered by the global rise of fascism. Ece Temelkuran has lived in Beirut, Tunis, Oxford, Paris and Zagreb. She is currently based in Berlin and is on the advisory board of Progressive International and DemocracyNext.

ecetemelkuran.net | @ETemelkuran | @ece.temelkuran

Editorial Reviews

"How to Lose a Country is a succinct and hard-hitting explainer on the rise of populism in Turkey and elsewhere, with a running refrain to western nations that consider themselves free from the threat of authoritarianism: this can happen to you"

Financial Times

"This is a keenly observed and passionately written book. Read it or be prepared to lose your country"

RABIH ALAMEDDINE

"Ece Temelkuran elegantly and wittily demolishes our most enduring and damaging political illusions. But she also cannily intuits and eloquently describes our deepest unmet needs for justice, peace and stability. Anyone rattled and disorientated by the political earthquakes of recent years ought to read her, and find solid ground again"

PANKAJ MISHRA

"The opponents of authoritarian populist and nationalist regimes have often failed to foresee or effectively resist their rise until it was too late. This highly informed and original book is essential reading for anybody who wants to understand the forces that are convulsing our world"

PATRICK COCKBURN

"The burning topic of today: populism. Vivid, visionary, terrifyingly familiar, this book is essential reading for everyone on planet Earth"

ANDREW SEAN GREER

"Temelkuran is a marvellously punk writer, filling the page with wit, energy, and accessible information. [How to Lose a Country] is precise, skewering, and approachable. And nothing makes you armed to fight back like a writer who can show you the darkness of the world without preaching"

Vogue - NIKESH SHUKLA

"Ece Temelkuran is a passionate authentic voice whose fearless stand against authoritarian incursion is inspiring. She writes with an urgent conviction that has never been more important than now"

TINA BROWN

"This is essential"

MARGARET ATWOOD

"A brilliant analysis of how democracy can be starved to death. It's one of the most important books anyone could read at the moment, when public institutions are slowly being corrupted wherever we look"

Philip Pullman

"When I left government, the first thing I read was How to Lose a Country and I couldn’t put it down. If you look at America from the outside in, it’s much clearer than looking at it from the eye of the storm. To me, Ece’s book remains the best guide to understanding the blend of right-wing populism and strongman authoritarianism that has metastasized around the world. Thanks to Ece's wise, accessible, personal and erudite book, I have been able to see much more clearly what’s been happening to American democracy and to politics in so many countries around the world"

BEN RHODES

"This book is a fierce mapping of the preceding stages of dissolution. It begins with the creation of populist movements. [ . . . ] The intensity of the call for political engagement and the fluency of expression make this an urgent read. Those looking for such steadfastness should begin here"

Irish Times

"A stunning, sane and intimate chronicle of a world gone nuts. An urgent whisper in our ears about our modern dictators and their collaborators"

MOHAMMED HANIF

"Highly readable and vibrates with outrage"

The Times

"An important, current and, most importantly, very readable book about the populist playbook and how it threatens to engulf us all"

RICK O'SHEA