MURATHAN MUNGAN’IN 995 KM ROMANINDA ANLATMA TEKNİĞİ
THE NARRATIVE TECHNIQUE IN THE NOVEL OF MURATHAN MUNGAN’S 995 KM

Summary/Abstract: Murathan Mungan, one of the important figures of contemporary Turkish literature, is a versatile writer who has produced works in many genres of literature. The author’s novel 995 km, published in 2023 as a result of a long and intensive work, contains remarkable elements both technically and thematically. The novel is about the 1990s, which the author considers as a dark period in Turkey’s recent history and identifies with unsolved murders. In the novel, where real events and people are fictionalized through various narrative techniques, the use of present tense narration technique and techniques for presenting consciousness attracts attention in particular. The strategy of narrating in the present tense, embedded in the past tense, effectively reflects the message that the author wants to give about the murder. It is seen that the present tense in the novel has functions such as creating a sense of simultaneity and an effect of immediacy, putting the reader in the position of a witness, increasing the resemblance to reality, making the narrative more vivid, referring to the intelligence network or cycle in which everyone watches each other by creating the effect of being watched by a camera, and creating the effect of timelessness. Presenting the mind of not only the unnamed murderer, the main character of the novel, but also other unnamed characters is important in understanding the mentality of the religious/political/military structures or organizations to which these characters are subject. Although the perspective of the characters is brought to the fore through figural narration technique, it is seen that the subjectivity of the narrator plays a prominent role in the novel. In this study, the use of the present tense narration technique and techniques for presenting consciousness will be examined by taking into account the role of the narrator.

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