The article examines the depiction of Ezidism in Turkish literature in the 20th and 21st centuries. Ezidism is an ancient Middle Eastern religion whose followers inhabit the mountainous borderlands of contemporary Turkey, Syria and Iraq. Their culture and language are very closely bound up with the Kurdish ethnic group. The Ezidis have traditionally led an isolated existence, their beliefs and customs little known to the general reader.  Using the works of Refik Halid Karay, Murathan Mungan and Zülfü Livaneli as examples, the authors deconstruct existing stereotypes about the Ezidis, who have historically been subjected to persecution. Special attention is paid to the multilevel structure, symbolic language, ethnographical details and cross-cultural allusions of Livaneli’s novel “Disquiet”, which places the tragic wave of genocide against the Ezidis in 2014-2017 in the context of universal issues of identity, obsession and humanism. The article aims to demonstrate the opportunities that can be fully unlocked by treating fictional texts as historical and ethnographical sources.