The Renovation Book Club Questions & Discussion Guide

About this book

When Dilara hires builders to add a bathroom after her elderly father moves in, they instead produce something impossible: not a replica but a magical portal to a fully functioning Turkish jail cell. From that bizarre premise, Kenan Orhan's debut spins a story that is funny with a decidedly unsettling edge. It asks where we truly belong, what political activism costs, and how many forms imprisonment can take, from exile to dementia.

Discussion questions

1. A bathroom renovation becomes a magical portal to a working Turkish prison. What was your first impression of that premise, and how did the book get you to accept it?
2. The novel is funny with a decidedly unsettling edge. If the tonal mix ever wrong-footed you, what pulled you back, the humor, Dilara, or the mystery of the cell?
3. Dilara takes in her elderly father and then finds herself living with an impossible prison. What did her situation reveal about her, and about caregiving and duty?
4. The book asks about political activism and what it costs. Where did you land on the choices the novel puts to its characters, and on what standing up requires?
5. Imprisonment takes many forms here, from a literal cell to exile to dementia. What did the novel ultimately seem to say about confinement, and about where we truly belong?
6. Orhan turns a short story into a novel built on a surreal conceit. How did the magical-realist premise carry the book's real-world questions, and did it work for you?
7. The story sits between Turkey and diaspora, between here and elsewhere. How did that in-between placement shape the book's ideas about belonging?
8. Did this remind you of another surreal or magical-realist novel, or another story about exile and imprisonment, in a book, a film, or life?
9. The book is interested in the invisible prisons people live inside. Did that idea resonate for anyone at the table?
10. Who would you hand this to next, the reader who loves inventive, surreal fiction or someone drawn to political stories told slant, and who might find the premise too strange?

Themes to listen for

• The many forms of imprisonment
• Exile and belonging
• Political activism and its cost
• Caregiving and family
• The surreal in the everyday

If your club liked this, try…

• Exit West by Mohsin Hamid
• Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
• The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
• The Bastard of Istanbul by Elif Shafak

Where to get it

• Check availability at your local library
• Find it on Bookshop.org

Practical notes

Best for clubs that love inventive, surreal fiction with a political edge. A debut novel.

Content notes: Themes of imprisonment and, at points, state violence.