Review of The Applicant by Nazli Koca

*The Applicant* by Nazli Koca (2023). Published by Grove House Press.

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m coming across in the world.

I recently fell into a spell of unemployment probably during the worst time to be unemployed, as it was very hard to find a job. I was applying to hundreds of jobs, getting interviews, but no offer was manifesting for me in the near future. So during this time, I had a lot of free time, and spent a good chunk of it chipping away at the blog.

As a book blogger, something I’ve always been super clear about and dedicated towards promoting are local libraries. I know having access to a good library is a privilege, and there are countries where people don’t really have access to books at all. I am so grateful every day that I have access to a decent library system, especially in today’s world.

I go to the library almost every week and check out all the new arrivals and anything that catches my eye among the regular fiction and nonfiction shelves. Today, for this blog post, the book I’m writing about I found in the regular fiction stacks.

Sometimes I give myself a book limit and head into the stacks to see what books I’ve never heard of before, and when I was in the “K” section I found The Applicant. I thought the name sounded Turkish on the book spine, and I was right when I saw the author bio. It was the synopsis and quote from Elif Batuman that had me checking the book out.

I ended up reading this book in one sitting. It’s only about two hundred pages, so I got through it fairly quickly over the course of an evening, as the “chapters” are fairly short as well.

Let’s get into the review before I start rambling too much!

A Turkish student in Germany finds her time running out when she sues her university in an attempt to keep staying here.

Our main character in this novel is Leyla, who was born and raised in Turkey. Her mother and sister still live back in the homeland, but Leyla has big dreams in Berlin of becoming a writer and someone who has something to say. Back in Turkey, she probably would not have the same opportunities due to censorship, but something big is happening in her life.

Leyla was in Germany on a student visa, as she was studying at a local university. She was just about to finish her degree, but then she managed to fail her thesis specifically. This forces her visa situation into a tricky one, as she is now about to be deported in a short amount of months.

Each chapter is structured as a diary/journal entry with the date on top, and while some of them are short, many of them are spent wandering around Berlin with her friends. Her friends are an interesting bunch, people who are creatives and kind of just float from place to place, but she sees an opportunity when she meets a conservative Swedish man.

Despite her initial judgement, Leyla continues talking to the Swedish man and they even start dating, which is a struggle in itself because they’re long distance. He lives in Sweden, not Berlin, and he offers a different kind of out from the life she’s currently living. Leyla finds a terrible job at a hostel where she cleans and scrubs toilets, effectively making her living the stereotypical broke artist life.

Desperate to keep the visa, Leyla also tries to sue the university for discrimination, but discovers throughout the novel that the legal system is not in favor of immigrants and nonresidents, especially when she’s on a time limit before she’s sent away to her home country.

As her time slowly begins to run out, Leyla begins contemplating not only her present situation and her future, but also how her past led her to this point. She dreams of returning to the childhood home in Istanbul, even maybe having two flats in the busy, frantic capital of Turkey, but we kind of know that this reality isn’t going to happen for her sadly.

It was in these sections of the novel that we truly get a taste for Leyla’s sadness beyond her current situation. She’s still kind of grieving the death of her father prior to the events of the novel, and if she returns to her mother and sister, she probably will return to a headspace that isn’t good. At the same time, she’s struggling incredibly in Germany and failed right at the end of her degree, which is a tragedy in itself.

Overall Thoughts

I wasn’t expecting to like this novel as much as I did, but I thought the perspective of a Turkish immigrant student about to be deported was an incredibly compelling one. I was fascinated by the synopsis originally because of this perspective, as it’s one we really don’t get in American publishing. When I was in Munich back in May 2025, I was fascinated by how many Turks I ran across on the streets.

The writing itself works well for shaping out Leyla as a character, and the most we get of other people is filtered through her perspective, such as the Swede. I didn’t care for her friends, although we get to know one of them quite well, nor the Swedish guy, as I was most invested in Leyla’s story.

I also didn’t care for the journal entry format, but I can see why this writer made the decision to use this in the book. Was it my favorite? No, but it worked for the story they were trying to tell.

All of this is to say—if you’re interested in this book and want a quick weekend read that’s compelling and an important story, pick this one up if you’re at your local library or indie bookstore. You may find it worth it!

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