From High Fashion to Haunting Tales: Yiğit Turhan Shares The Secrets Behind His Debut Gothic Novel 

Yiğit Turhan’s horror novel, Their Monstrous Hearts, started life as an act of wish fulfilment: to bring his grandmother back to life. “I was angry; it felt so unfair that she had died when she had so much will to live,” he says. “I longed to speak with her again.” So, he created a fictional world in which the hero (or perhaps the anti-hero) Perihan is an impeccably chic, red-manicured grandmother, who trails the scent of tuberose. “It became a way of creating new memories with my grandmother.”

If this sounds unusually stylish for a horror novel, that’s because Yiğit’s day job is chief marketing officer for a renowned luxury brand. He moved to Milan 15 years ago from his native Turkey and worked at Zegna and Gucci, before completing a clean sweep of the big Italian fashion houses with his current role. “Writing is much more solitary than fashion, where there is a lot of back and forth,” he muses. “When you write, it is just you and the world you create.”

For Their Monstrous Hearts, this world is also shaped by his personal history. While clearing out his grandmother’s house in Ankara, Turkey – the house where Yiğit spent so much of his childhood – Yiğit’s parents stumbled upon objects that seemed to reveal hidden aspects of her life: a butterfly painting under the bed (his grandmother hated butterflies); a dusty pair of moccasins (she wore heels); her diaries (none of them knew she wrote a diary). “It was as though she had a secret life,” says Yiğit. It was in these unexpected discoveries that the character of Perihan began to take form in Yiğit’s mind – almost as if she had “walked” into his head. Alone in his apartment in Milan during the pandemic, he began to write. “The more Perihan whispered her secrets to me, the more she transformed into something else. My mother says I need to stop telling everyone Perihan is based on my grandmother, because she was not a monster!”

In the novel, struggling writer Riccardo is summoned home when Perihan dies. But why is her once-grand villa decaying, the garden tangled and overgrown, the greenhouse he was forbidden from entering as a child smashed? Why do her friends whisper in corners? When Riccardo finds a manuscript written by Perihan and addressed to him, its contents are illuminating, terrifying – and possibly deadly.

Horror is very much Yiğit’s thing. His grandmother (who else?) introduced him to it when he was just five years old: they would have secret all-night “crazy movie marathons”. Although he’s not totally fearless – growing up with a devoted, overprotective mother means he has “anxiety around potential dangers to this day. I can watch any horror movie but put me on a rollercoaster – even a children’s one like a caterpillar – and I start screaming!”

Their Monstrous Hearts is Yiğit’s debut English-language book, following two previously published works in Turkish – and has all the hallmarks of classic gothic horror: the devoted servant; a hidden monster; a creeping sense of dread. It’s dark, lavish and filmic. “I write as if I am watching an imaginary film and translating it onto the page,” explains Yiğit. Talks of a screen adaptation are underway, with Jean Smart or Catherine O’Hara on his casting wish list – “I’ve sent the book to them both.” His dream is to write screenplays; a passion he’s nurtured since he was seven when he wrote plays for his school friends, often landing in detention for ideas like: “A woman, divorced three times, finds a new lover,” he laughs.

His novel’s central conceit, however, is the pursuit of immortality. “Perihan’s life is an endless journey to find stability and purpose – to break free. But just as she finds it, her body starts failing. I began to imagine a parallel universe where we are not limited by our bodies. But to seek immortality, you have to be obsessed with life. That’s when I started thinking about metamorphosis.”

It’s no accident that his grandmother’s monarch butterfly is the motif: “They transform and when they die, their genetic memory means the next generation remember where to fly.” They also have a sinister beauty. “I said to myself, ‘What is a universally accepted way of hiding evil?’ In beauty, in plain sight. No one ever suspects the butterfly.”

As he rides the wave of acclaim, Yiğit is already working on his next horror novel: “I have thousands of ideas. I write them all down, and if I can’t get the idea out of my head for six months, then I know I must write it.”  His inspiration comes from his curiosity. “I’m a very, very curious person and I love to experience life, so I will try things without knowing in advance whether not I will enjoy them.” Such as? “I went with Dua to Glastonbury. It was a magical to watch her, we’ve been friends for years, and she was also one of the first to read the book. Though I am very high maintenance, and I had to stay in a tent. There were all these beautiful young people, and I was like the monster in the greenhouse. Now that is horror!”  

Their Monstrous Hearts is published 10 April by Mira Books

THE RISE OF FEMINIST HORROR

5 more books to – ahem – sink your teeth into...

The Lamb by Lucy Rose

A mother and daughter living in the Cumbrian wilds gorge themselves on men lost in the woods – or the local bus driver. A poignant coming-of-age tale that’s also a shocking, visceral body horror – best not to read it over breakfast.

The Eyes Are The Best Part by Monika Kim

Femgore went mainstream with this gruesomely funny bestselling novel, which tackles big issues and feminist revenge as Korean-American Ji-wan turns serial killer. The film rights have already been snapped up.

Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder

An anonymous suburban mother stuck at home with her toddler turns feral (literally) in Yoder’s clever dissection of female identity – and what happens when you don’t fit the prescribed mould.

Itch! by Gemma Amor

Josie discovers a decomposing body infested by a horde of ants, and her grip on reality begins to unravel as she investigates the mystery of a masked killer stalking the forest. This upcoming ‘feminist folk horror’ is heading to bookstores this autumn.

She’s Always Hungry by Eliza Clark

Clark’s pitch-black grisly debut, Boy Parts, was a viral TikTok sensation. This new collection of short stories veers from horror to realism via dystopian dread, while tackling sex, power, gender and the body.