Friday, April 17, 2009

Antonio Gramsci, Hapishane Defterleri

Today I went to a bookstore and came across a new translation of an old book. The book I am talking about is Gramsci's "Prison Notebooks" - Hapishane Defterleri in Turkish. It was published in Turkish before (Belge Yayinlari, 2003); however I think it ran out of print and was not easily found in the bookstores. Looking from this way, I think it is good that the book is published now by another publisher in Turkey. The name of the company is Aşina Kitaplar which is located in Ankara. They also have a website address. You can access to the book from this link. If you want to buy the book from internet, you can do it from various websites.

I haven't started reading the book yet, therefore I cannot comment on its language and whether the translation is good or not. Apart from the language issue, I should mention that there is a chapter at the beginning of the book, Introduction to Gramsci, that is written by the publishers, I think. Under this title, various important concepts, such as hegemony, war of movement, transformismo, passive revolution, etc., in the Gramscian thought have been briefly explained. Such an introduction chapter, I think, will be very useful for the readers who are going Gramsci for the first time.