“We’re losing home on so many different levels. Physically. Politically. Morally. And after AI, spiritually — because language, our spiritual home, is taken away from us. We now have to share it with an unhuman entity.” — Ece Temelkuran

Do you feel homeless — physically, politically, morally or spiritually? That’s the question posed by Ece Temelkuran’s new book Nation of Strangers: Rebuilding Home in the Twenty-First Century. Shortlisted for the 2026 Women’s Prize for Nonfiction, the narrative is structured as a series of letters from one homeless stranger to another. Temelkuran left Turkey in 2016, after threats to her life made staying untenable. After seven years of exile — in Beirut, Tunis, Oxford, Paris, Zagreb, and now Berlin — she has written both her own and our story in today’s globalized, populist age.

She’s been called everything from a 21st century Hannah Arendt to a “ruthless Cassandra.” And yet she retains faith in the future — as a defiant stance, a can-do-no-other attitude against rootlessness and loneliness. The wisdom of survival, Ece Temelkuran argues, lies with refugees, exiles and migrants like herself. This nation of strangers are rebuilding home in our homeless world.

Five Takeaways

• Four Kinds of Homelessness. Physical — refugees, migrants, the displaced. Political — people who no longer recognize their countries. Moral — people who see the cruelty of our times and find no institution capable of stopping it. Spiritual — language, our innermost home, now shared with AI. Four levels of being unhoused at once.

• Minneapolis as a Nation of Strangers. When ordinary people formed human chains to resist ICE, they built a Nation of Strangers in real time. People who had never met, holding on to each other because they recognized a shared condition. Not an ideology. Not a party. Strangers building a home together.

• Digital Refugees. When Musk bought Twitter, millions fled to Bluesky and Mastodon — behaving like refugees. Looking back at the old home while building a new one. Temelkuran’s question: why did no one think to occupy Twitter? Our political imagination has become extraordinarily limited.

• Gaza and the Move-On Ideology. Gaza was the ultimate test of how much humanity can swallow. What devastated Temelkuran most: Kushner at Davos presenting a PowerPoint for a seaside resort in Gaza. That is neoliberal morality. Move on. The lowest of the low.

• The Pioneers of History. The wisdom of survival — remaking home from scratch, surviving with dignity — belongs to refugees, exiles, migrants. These are the pioneers of history. Soon everyone will need what they know. That is why their stories matter now.

About the Guest

Ece Temelkuran is a Turkish writer and political thinker, author of Nation of Strangers (Simon & Schuster, May 2026), shortlisted for the 2026 Women’s Prize for Nonfiction, and How to Lose a Country.

References

Nation of Strangers by Ece Temelkuran (Simon & Schuster, May 2026)
How to Lose a Country by Ece Temelkuran
Together: A Manifesto Against a Heartless World by Ece Temelkuran

About Keen On America

Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen.

Website: https://keenon.tv/ Substack: https://keenon.substack.com/ YouTube: https://youtube.com/@KeenOnShow

Chapters:

00:00:31 Is Ece still retaining faith in the future?
00:01:47 Faith as a stance: like Martin Luther, here I stand
00:02:30 How to Lose a Country and what comes next
00:02:57 Minneapolis as a Nation of Strangers
00:04:00 Four kinds of homelessness: physical, political, moral, spiritual
00:04:35 AI and the loss of language as spiritual home
00:05:10 Why this book now — and why it’s the most personal
00:05:52 Resisting the victim narrative after exile
00:07:20 The pioneers of history: refugees as the advance guard
00:08:25 The ruthless Cassandra: is that fair?
00:09:21 Orban defeated, Trump on his way out: is she wrong?
00:13:00 Gaza as the ultimate test
00:15:00 Kushner’s Davos PowerPoint: the lowest of the low
00:16:00 Neoliberal morality: move on
00:34:52 Digital refugees: leaving Twitter after Musk
00:35:50 Why didn’t we occupy Twitter?
00:38:32 The gendered quality of the Women’s Prize
00:38:57 The onion story: democracy is about smelling of onion
00:39:50 In a Nation of Strangers, if you can smell onions, they’re your friend