Spanning decades and landscapes, from the forests along the Black Sea to the streets of Istanbul, Kenan Orhan's ?playful stories ?conjure dreamlike worlds-of talking animals, flying houses, and omniscient prayer-callers-to ?examine humanity's unfaltering pursuit of hope in even the darkest circumstances.

A determined florist trains a neighborhood stray dog to blow up a corrupt president. A garbage collector finds banned instruments-and later, musicians-in the trash and takes them home to form a clandestine orchestra in her attic. A smuggler risks his life to bring a young woman claiming to be pregnant via immaculate conception across the border with Syria. A poor cage-maker tries to use his ability to talk to birds to woo his childhood love just before the 1955 Istanbul pogrom. These characters are united by a desperate yearning to break free from the volatile realities they face: rising authoritarianism, cultural and political turmoil, and staggering violence.

Ranging from the absurd to the tenderhearted, the stories in I Am My Country illuminate the constant force amid one country's history of rampant oppression and revolutionary progress: the impulse to survive.