"You'll live out your lives in a foreign country," Gul is warned. But the whole world is foreign when you're far from your loved ones. The train ride to Germany ushers in the days of long-awaited letters, night-time telephone calls and blissful summers back home. The years of hard work will flow like water before her house in Turkey is built and she can return.

Until then, there will be fireworks, young love, and the cassette tapes of the summer played on repeat. In these years, Gul will learn all kinds of longing: for her two daughters, for her father the blacksmith, for scents and colours and fruit. Yet imperceptibly, Factory Lane in this cold, incomprehensible country becomes a different kind of home.

A novel about how home is found in many places and yet still eludes us.

"A modern-day fairy tale." NDR

"An absolutely recommended novel that quietly stimulates the reader's thoughts and portrays the hard work behind seeing a new country as home." migazin

"A unique novel about the losses, sacrifices and determination of generations of migrant women; as important as it is moving." Preti Taneja

Translated by: Ayca Turkoglu, Katy Derbyshire