"I met the protagonist of this novel in 1951 at the Üsküdar Paşakapısı Prison," Aziz Nesin explains. "He was a convicted forger over fifty years old. I won't say that I depicted this exact man in the novel; in fact, one might even say the character I wrote isn't him at all. However, the living source that inspired the character 'Paşazade' in my book was indeed that convicted forger I met behind bars."

"He stood apart from other notorious criminals who took pleasure, even pride, in embellishing and recounting their misdeeds. Unlike them, Paşazade never consoled himself with fatalistic excuses like, 'What can one do, it’s my destiny... it was written.' To silence his conscience, he had concocted a much more human justification for his crimes. He would say: 'There was only one way out: forgery... I had no other hope; I had to commit forgery... All paths were closed to me; there was only one way left before me.'"

"That is why I named this novel The Only Way Out," Nesin concludes. "It is for this reason that I wanted to write the novel of those who are 'left with no way out'—or at least those who believe they are." Through brilliant character study and sharp satire, Nesin explores the moral compromises people make when backed into a corner by society.