The Applicant by Nazli Koca

Published by Grove Press on February 14, 2023

The Applicant takes the form of Leyla's diary. Leyla believes that autobiographies are always embellished with fiction. Why not disguise her life as fiction, changing only the names of the innocent? Yet she wonders whether it is possible both to live and narrate a life without subjecting either the life or the narrative to censorship. If Leyla is censoring her life, she is at least letting the reader see the good parts.

The “my novel is my life” premise only works when lives are interesting or characters have something to say. Leyla has something to say about just how uninteresting her life is and how helpless she is to find productive ways to escape the drudgery. Oddly enough, the drudgery of her life turns out to be interesting.

Leyla’s life is filled with the drama of a young unattached woman who feels out of place. Leyla is from Turkey but she’s living in Berlin, making immigration — invisible borders and the arbitrary documents required to cross them — a prominent theme. Leyla needs funds to renew her student visa, but she can only do that if she wins her appeal after being kicked out of the university for writing a thesis that “wasn’t academic enough.” She also needs to hold a job to convince the German government that she can support herself legally.

There has recently been a coup in Turkey and Leyla doesn’t want to return to live under a dictatorship, but if she stays in Germany by claiming refugee status she won’t be able to go home to visit her family. Conversely, if she returns to Turkey — where her debt-ridden mother and sister are staying with her aunt — she will only qualify for a minimum wage job and will never save enough money to return to Germany.

The story addresses discrimination against Turks in Germany, particularly in academia. The professor who failed Leyla is notorious for passing every student without reading their shoddy theses, but he held Leyla to a higher standard.  She is bitter that she must be either “a perfect student or a poor refugee” to remain in the country. To be fair, however, Leyla was far from a perfect student.

Leyla wants to be a writer but doesn’t want to write “the kind of book that gets one’s family’s home raided by the police.” She earns a reputation by interviewing minor celebrities in front of small Berlin audiences but the celebrities take all the entrance fees. She parties and hangs out with Aria, an unpublished writer, and with Victor, her gay Cuban roommate, and with Mona, who defies description.

Leyla’s friend Defne suggested that Leyla replace her in the the job Defne was leaving at a hostel, but didn’t mention that it was a cleaning job. Leyla cleans by day, hoarding half-empty bottles of alcohol that guests leave behind, and by night visits clubs and gets messed up on alcohol, weed, and ketamine. She sleeps with guys at random.

Female sexuality is a central theme. Mona suggests that Leyla earn extra income as an escort, since she might as well be paid if she wants random sexual encounters. Leyla writes memories in her diary of working with Mona for a couple of months when she should have been focusing on her thesis. Having been exploited by men throughout her life, Leyla is astonished to learn how easy it is to take money from them.

Leyla considers the hypocrisy of men who regard sex and money as the ultimate prizes in life but make it illegal for women to have sex for money. She wonders why women are expected to earn their equality by beating men at their own game after centuries of providing domestic labor for free, when it is so much easier to change the rules and gain power through sex. At the same time, she comes to regard the commodification of her sexuality as socially paralyzing.

As Leyla is waiting for her visa status to resolve, she initiates a sexual encounter with a Swedish Volvo salesman who picks her up in a Berlin bar. When she visit him in Sweden, she tries to convince herself that she isn’t using him as she contemplates living a middle class, Ikea-furnished life. Maybe she even loves him, although she thought the same about Mona. Yet the Swede doesn’t share her liberal philosophy. He doesn’t read or think deeply. He is always calm while Leyla is a tight bundle of anxiety. Perhaps their personalities are too dissimilar to make a relationship work.

The novel’s limited drama lies in the choices Leyla must make. Should she marry the Swede? He’s handsome and attentive and kind. Her mother thinks a handsome Swede who has a job is a perfect choice. To live with the Swede, Leyla would need to abandon her “adventurous writer’s life,” perhaps losing the only material she can find that’s worth writing about. She would also need to live in Turkey while awaiting a Swedish residential visa. Yet her other choices — returning to school, finding a decent job that is consistent with her visa restrictions — are largely beyond her control. Perhaps a return to Turkey and a career writing advertising copy is her fate. She feels that she is on the verge of making a terrible mistake but does not know which choice will be the mistake. That’s life in a nutshell.

Late entries hint that Leyla might find at least modest success as a writer. Whether she will make the right choice about her life is up in the air. The ending has a coming of age moment — a realization that it’s time to grow up — that seems forced. Maybe a transition to maturity is expected in the story of a young person’s life, but Leyla’s life is interesting precisely because she’s not sufficiently mature to make good decisions. I liked Leyla because she put maturity on hold. It’s only when partying and a dead-end job get old that Leyla predictably decides to face reality. Okay, that’s nice, but predictable behavior doesn’t make for compelling fiction. Still, getting to know Leyla before she reaches her turning point is worth a reader’s time.

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