This event is part of Letters Home, our series of curated programs celebrating the many ways we imagine, remember, and return to home from afar. Learn more →

How does a country gradually slide toward autocracy? Drawing on more than a decade of reporting from a single neighborhood in Istanbul, journalist and Pulitzer Prize finalist Suzy Hansen explores the rise of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan from reform-minded technocrat to authoritarian leader in her new book, From Life Itself. Through the lives of Turks, Kurds, and Syrian refugees living side by side, Hansen traces the local realities behind sweeping political change, asking what Turkey’s recent history reveals about the resurgence of authoritarianism—and what it can teach us about democracies around the world today.

About the speaker:

Suzy Hansen lived in Istanbul for more than a decade, where she was a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and many other publications. Her first book, Notes on a Foreign Country, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Nonfiction and the winner of the Overseas Press Club of America’s Cornelius Ryan Award. Her second book, From Life Itself: Turkey, Istanbul and Neighborhood in the Age of Erdogan, was  published in April 2026. She has taught writing at Princeton University, New York University, and Bard College.

Important information: The discussion will be available both online and in person. While the conversation will happen in person (the speakers will appear in the Reading Room), the Library will stream the conversation on Zoom for a live viewing experience. Both in-person and online attendees will be able to pose questions.

Attendance at this event constitutes permission for your photograph or video to be taken at the event and used by the American Library in Paris for marketing, promotional, pedagogical, or other purposes.