The Book Club sessions of the 30th Istanbul Theatre Festival’s free Festival Plus programme delve into the literary sources behind adaptations staged at the festival. The final session in the series is dedicated to Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, staged at the festival in a production directed by Mehmet Birkiye.

Writer, editor and translator Eylül Görmüş, a contributor to KAFA magazine and K24 and host of the programmes Pandora’nın Merakı and Nereden Başlamalı, leads the session.

The session focuses on Oscar Wilde’s only published novel. First published in a magazine in 1890, The Picture of Dorian Gray was later expanded and republished by Wilde following debates over its ‘immorality’. Through Dorian Gray, who remains young while his portrait takes on every sin he commits, the novel explores the desire for beauty, the obsession with youth, the tension between pleasure and morality, and the decay concealed beneath appearances.

The session will revisit these themes in the context of today’s world, while also looking at how Dorian Gray has found expression in film, theatre, opera and popular culture. In an age of filters, cosmetic procedures and the tyranny of looking flawless, Dorian Gray remains all too familiar.

The event is free, but reservations are required. You can reserve your place here.

The Book Club will be held in Turkish.

Participants are expected to have read the novel.