“This is essential”
—MARGARET ATWOOD via Twitter

“Temelkuran, a treasure of a novelist, turns a nonfiction eye to the burning topic of today: populism. Vivid, visionary, terrifyingly familiar”
—ANDREW SEAN GREER, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Less

“May be the most important political book you read in 2019 . . . Her tone is brave, deeply personal, witty, honest and melancholic in its delivery, with the writer’s style leaning more toward emotional humanism than cold-blooded rational political science”
—THE GLOBE AND MAIL

“Highly readable and vibrates with outrage”
—THE TIMES

“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, internationally-bestselling author of The Golden Compass

“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, former Deputy National Security Advisor of the United States

“She has seen the rise of authoritarian and polarizing President Erdogan in her own country and has a firm grasp on the direction of travel in the west. Here she highlights trends in political discourse—the infantilisation of language, the phoney idea of ‘real people’ and ‘the real world,’ the pitting of one social/racial/religious group against the other—as well as sophisticated election methods which can lead to actual or virtual dictatorships. In terms of potentially upsetting scenes, this is an X rating. In terms of urgent importance, it’s a A*”
—BIG ISSUE

“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, author of Bland Fanatics

“In the tradition of Hannah Arendt’s Origins of Totalitarianism, Ece Temelkuran exquisitely dissects the origins of authoritarian populism, using the bitterly learned lessons of Turkey to warn England and America. Not stopping at critique, she offers defiant visions of how demagogues might be fought. A poetic, vital, harsh and ultimately hopeful book”
—MOLLY CRABAPPLE, author of Drawing Blood and Brothers of the Gun

“This is a keenly observed and passionately written book. Read it or be prepared to lose your country”
—RABIH ALAMEDDINE, author of The Wrong End of the Telescope