This isn’t just a sculpture, it’s a true funerary monument. A stone, sourced from the mountains of Anatolia, is positioned to crush thousands of books. It’s a powerful, painful work that denounces the Turkish state’s long-standing habit of censoring and banning countless books, poetry collections, novels, essays, published in Turkey from 1900 to the present day. Created by Kurdish artist Ahmet Güneştekin, the piece carries profound symbolic weight and speaks to the dark moment his country is experiencing; days in which the most basic values of freedom are under serious threat, if not outright erased. Ahmet Güneştekin (born in Batman, Turkey, 1966) is considered Turkey’s most prominent artist, and he chose to share one of his latest works with la Lettura as a way of bearing witness to the spirit of the times. This cover not only reflects the absurdity of today’s world, at every latitude, but also includes a QR code that, starting Tuesday, will give readers access to a video in which the artist himself explains the meaning behind the work. Much of Güneştekin’s practice is driven by political and civil engagement, and now more than ever, his voice rises as a brave and forceful, thankfully not solitary, cry for freedom. Gianluigi Colin