STANDALONE

The Enemy’s Breath

Can Kırkgöz

War does not set people against one another only at the front. Sometimes it forces two enemies to live under the same roof. Katya lives alone in a small Russian village near the front line. When she finds a gravely wounded Ottoman soldier in the snowbound forest, she makes the most dangerous decision of her life: instead of handing him over to the soldiers, she carries him home and tries to heal him. To her, Mert is a stranger. An enemy. And they do not even share a language. Yet as the days pass, words slip into their silences, trust into their fears, and an unexpected closeness into their strangeness. While the war draws nearer outside, another struggle grows within the house — one they both try to ignore. Because once Mert is well, he has to leave. And if Katya keeps hiding him, she may lose everything she has. There are borders whose crossing is far more dangerous than crossing enemy lines. The Enemy’s Breath is the story of two people born on opposite sides of a war, unable to speak each other’s language, travelling from fear to trust, from strangeness to friendship, and into a forbidden love. Sometimes the greatest danger is not the enemy at your door. It is beginning to wish he would never leave.