Powerful Moments
Leila: The Unheard Woman is the story of a woman whose mental health struggles are both minimized and mislabeled by her family and lead to her being committed to the psychiatric ward of a hospital. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
The main inspiration for me in writing this story was the life of a real person. This is not just a fictional story – it is based on real experiences, real pain and a real voice that has been lost in silence for years. Leila’s story is about one woman, but in reality it is about many women whose lives and pain are often lost in the background of the system, stereotypes or misunderstanding.
As a psychotherapist, I still often hear the voices of women who are just as unheard by family, society, or institutions as Leila’s voice was years ago. It was this experience that made me want to write this story – so that, for once, this story would be heard fully and attentively. At the same time, it was important for me not only to carefully reveal Leila’s voice, but also to express the pain associated with the fact that, despite the many years that have passed since that time, the problems of not listening to women, minimizing their experience, continue to exist in our world today. That is why this story is not just about the past – it is also about our present.
Many of the most powerful moments happen in small conversations or silences rather than dramatic confrontations. Why was restraint important to the story you wanted to tell?
When you write about real pain, you realize that the most powerful moments often happen in silence. It can be a brief conversation, a look, or a thought that a person cannot say out loud. In Leila’s story, moments like these are important. I didn’t want to cover up the real, silent pain that existed in her life with dramatic scenes.
In real life, pain often exists in silence, in small details, in unfinished sentences. Leila’s story is like that: not much is said directly, but it is still felt strongly. It was this silence that I wanted the reader to feel.
The words, phrases, and tone that accompany the story accurately reflect the voice of “order” that was characteristic of the reality of the time.
The title emphasizes that Leila is an “unheard” woman. What does it mean, in your view, for someone to be seen but not truly heard?
Leila is visible to everyone: her family, her doctors, her society. They see her beauty, her condition, her behavior. They also see her as a patient, as her roles of a daughter, a wife, a mother, as a “problem,” but they don’t see her as a person with her own story, so they don’t listen to what she says – her pain, her fears, her desires. In such a situation, a person seems to exist, but their voice loses its meaning. Leila is in exactly this situation – she is in front of everyone, but still no one understands her true story. That’s why she’s the “unheard woman” – because no one wanted to fully listen to her voice.
What is one thing you hope readers take away from Leila’s experiences?
Leila’s story shows us how dangerous it is when society and the system ignore a person’s voice. I wish readers to rethink that compassion, listening, and support can be very important for a person’s survival. Most of all, I want this story to remind us that each person is much more than their condition, diagnosis, or someone else’s assessment. And sometimes the most important thing we can do is simply listen sincerely. If after this book even one person listens more carefully to another – especially a woman who is in pain – then Leila’s story will definitely not be lost.
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The story follows Leila, a mother whose fear, pain, trauma, and postpartum suffering are dismissed, misread, and slowly transformed into diagnoses. Raised to be quiet, orderly, and obedient, she learns early that a woman’s safety depends on endurance. When she speaks, she is called unstable. When she protests, she is called dangerous. When she becomes silent, she is called “stable.”
Inside the psychiatric system of the Soviet and post-Soviet world, Leila’s voice loses its meaning. Her emotions are treated as symptoms. Her motherhood becomes a risk factor. Her longing for her child is rewritten as pathology. Each attempt to explain herself only deepens the case against her.
This is not a story about madness.
It is a story about dismissal, misdiagnosis, and mistreatment – and about how easily a woman can disappear when her suffering does not fit acceptable forms.
Written in restrained, poetic prose, the novel explores institutional power, gendered violence, forced separation from a child, and the quiet strategies of survival that leave no visible scars. It speaks to women raised in silence and order, to mothers cut off from their children, and to anyone who has learned to survive by becoming smaller.
Leila’s story does not end where her voice stops. It continues – through memory, through inheritance, and through the hope that women will never be silenced.
Posted on March 20, 2026, in Interviews and tagged author, Biographical & Autofiction Fiction, book, book recommendations, book review, Book Reviews, book shelf, bookblogger, books, books to read, ebook, goodreads, Historical Biographical Fiction, indie author, kindle, kobo, Leila: The Unheard Woman, literature, Mari Mdivani, nook, novel, read, reader, reading, story, Women's Psychological Fiction, writer, writing. Bookmark the permalink. Leave a comment.
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