In addition to his regular television work, Özcan Akyol regularly visits secondary schools to promote literature, but do they take him seriously? “You look like my drug dealer!”
There is a whole marketing machine in operation to promote the new book Afslag 23 by none other than Özcan Akyol. He was in the talk show by Humberto Tan. “This book is about a boy who lives in an underclass. His name is Eus. That’s my literary alter ego. All my main characters are called Eus.”
Social classes
Özcan’s book is about climbing the social ladder, which he himself has done. In his youth, he could not always easily settle into other environments. “It was only much later that I understood that there are different social classes in our society. That has nothing to do with my ethnicity, with the fact that I have a Turkish background,” he explains.
He continues: “Because this applies to everyone, I think, who comes from a social underclass with parents who have not studied. You are the first generation student and I wanted to describe the entire process of what that looks like in practice in the book.”
Eus at school
Özcan also tries to reach the younger target group with his message. “So I visit a lot of secondary schools. I try to go to a high school once a week. They always start reluctantly. They don’t like me because I’m a writer. So it is not personal.”
Those young people find him boring in advance. “Suspicious, boring and they think: what is that guy doing? But I really have to win them. I have to win over a group of young people every week. Sometimes you get very nice reactions.”
Drug dealer
One of them will always stay with Özcan. “I will never forget that once after a lecture a boy came up to me and said, ‘Sir, you know what I find so interesting and cool about you? You’re very smart and very funny, but you also look like my local drug dealer.” If you can achieve that as a writer…”
He continues: “That is what I mean by lowering the threshold. We shouldn’t think that all writers are pipe-smoking people sitting back at home waiting to see how sales go.”
TikTok
Özcan wants literature to be for everyone and not just for shadowy Bert van der Veer-like types. “I’m sometimes blamed for that in literary circles, like: Eus, why are you such a marketing machine? Why are you on TikTok? But I think you should do everything and reach all levels of society.”