Category: Turkey

Surgical ward 9 by Peyami Safa

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Surgical Ward 9 by Peyami Safa

Turkish fiction

Original title – Dokuzuncu Hariciye Koğuşu

Translator – Ralph Hubbell

Source review copy

I was sent a number of the first books from the English arm of a Turkish publisher, Thousand Horsemen Press, in this country.  They have published four books, and this slim volume is considered a classic in Turkey.  This book is perhaps one of the fifteen novels Peyami Safa wrote, his most personal and best-known work, as it is a reflection on his own childhood, during which he also had bone tuberculosis in his right arm.  His book has been taught in schools in Turkey and made into films. He had a close working relationship with his fellow writer, Nazim Hikmet . He also translated a number of books from French and had a good knowledge of Arabic. A writer who should be better known in English.  This is the first translation of this book into English.

I too was one of them, and there was no one older than me. I was the only patient there suffering from an idiopathic disease, which I had had since I was eight.

I had spent years waiting outside that examination room, and others just like it. Never once accompanied by a grown-up, I would walk alone through the hospital’s wrought iron gate and make my way towards the ninth

‘surgical ward, envious of the very health of the grounds’ sturdy trees. The strange bright glare of the entrance’s windows would then strike my eyes and churn my stomach with fear, I would enter the passageway and sit off to the side alone, barely stirring, staying quiet, waiting, petrified to the point where I could feel the colour draining from my face.

from a section called troubles of a solitary child

captures the despair of sitting waiting

The book follows our narrator, who is 15 and is stuck in the hospital as he has bone tuberculosis in his right leg. The problem is that the doctors don’t know really what to do; some are nice, others are not. This is a boy stuck with a lot of pain, and the book is told in episodic parts. What happens is he sees a girl, Nüzhet, in the hospital. Seh shines for this boy; she is something different for him.  This girl awakens a dying boy.  This is what happens when you are dying, but then a wonderful light enters your life. The way he describes her, you feel this may have happened to the writer himself. Of course, his narrator in the book has a much worse case than the writer himself did, but there is a sense of time spent in the hospital.  He is well-read for a young man of fifteen. At times, the way he talks with his doctors shows that.  He has few options, will he leave the hospital?

Naturally, a girl wants to be happy.

I keep trying to tell myself this very basic fact. Even in my daydreams, my faltering logic comes to the same con-clusion, but then I begin to reason against it again as if I still need to be convinced.

Suddenly, the unbelievable: I hear something. The sound of someone knocking on the door. I do not believe it at first, but I listen carefully. It’s true.

“Who is it?” I said.

A low voice: “It’s me. Are you asleep? Can I come in?” Nüzhet! Nüzhet in the middle of the night! I could

only mouth the word, “Yes.”

“Can I come in?” she asked again.

Amazed, I sat upright in my bed:

“Yes!” I said.

She opened the door.

She wore a shawl draped over her nightshirt. Her feet,

inside her slippers, were bare.

She walked boldly over to the bed, an act so daring it caused me to feel the intensity of her fright. She looked at me and laughed.

Nuzhet as he views her !

This is a book that can be read in a single evening. I read it in two sittings, as I was so caught up in what was happening to the narrator and in how this girl lit up his world.  She may not be the best person, but there is a sense that this one figure is his hope at this one time. A boy discovering himself . A country struggling in the middle of a war and a sick boy stuck in a hospital jump off the page; you sense this is more auto-fiction, a legacy instead of an arm, some of the options the narrator has to face feel like those the writer may have faced. Did he have a Nuzhet light up his world ? I felt this book salos had a nod towards modernism the way we our in our narrators thoughts called Mrs Dalloway and maybe even something like Hunger by Knut Hamsum it captures a psychological feel to the narrative that the book shares with both the books I have mentioned also he translated french fiction so Proust for the ilness side of the book may have been an inspiration for his writing. It is a gem of a book that has also been made into a film. Maybe the best line is this from his friend Nãzim Hiket “I’ve read Peyami’s latest novel three times, I can read thirty more, I definitely will” High praise!

Cold Nights of Childhood by Tezer Özlü

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Cold Nights of Childhood by Tezer Özlü

Turkish fiction

Original title – Çocukluğun Soğuk Geceleri

Translator Maureen F’reely

Source – Personal copy

I kick off this year’s Women in Translation Month with a slim gem of a novella from Turkey. I feel that in the sixteen years I’ve been blogging, the landscape for books in translation has changed. I can think of very few, if any, female Turkish writers who were available in English 16 years ago. This is one of the beauties of things like women in Translation. Months have helped along, and small presses like Serpent Tail are willing to take a chance on books like this. This novel was written forty years before it was finally translated into English. It captures a writer who, like the character in her book, had spent time travelling in Europe but also in institutions and had undergone electroshock therapy like the character in her novel. This debut novel was written in Turkish, but her later works were written in German; she also worked as a translator between the languages.

Sunday is bath day. We take it in turns. On cold days, a large copper basin is placed next to the stove. We bend over the basin to wash our hair. Then we sit in the basin and wash our bodies with what little water sits inside it. Bunni oversees all this. She pours the dirty water into a bucket, returning with a bucket full of clean water. Bunni never gets tired. Bunni devotes her life to overseeing baths, sweeping up ashes and cleaning away filth. For as long as I can remember, that’s what she’s been doing. She can even hold fire between her fingers.

When she isn’t doing laundry, washing dishes, praying, fasting, she’s at argamba Market. No one offers her more than this. If they did, she wouldn’t listen. When she pours the last drops of water over our heads, she blesses us with prayers in Arabic.

And we protest:

—God does not exist!

The first bit of this quote reminded me of how the uk used be weekly baths seem distant and the last line of god not existing would have been shocking then for her to say

The woman in the book, unnamed, is rather like the writer of the book. This free-spirited woman wants to be herself but is caught in a world where it is very patriarchal, and thus she keeps getting into institutions and having shock therapy. I was thinking how outdated that is these days, still used in very extreme cases of mental health issues, but much more tightly done than at this time. I think that maybe also adds to the structure of the book a jumble of thoughts, memories spilling onto the page childhood memories of rural Turkey, next thing in smokey cafes in Paris sexual awakening encounters this is the tale of a young woman maybe thirty year before her time a spirit unbound but caught in a world where things are changing the late seventies were turbulant yeas in Turkey.

Past the two double-sided sales counters by the entrance of Baylan Patisserie, there’s a large and dimly lit salon. This is where my brother and his friends gather every day towards evening.And so do we, to observe their legendary goings-on. In the begin-ning, they don’t invite us to join them. We sit at a nearby table, Günk and I, keeping a close eye on them while chatting. The genial, fatherly Greek waiters create an atmosphere that is possibly the most welcoming we have ever experienced. Istanbul too small in those days to fit my brother and his friends. They’re all university students. But they’re more interested in things like writing, drama and art. They have a shared obsession, too: Paris.The city of art, they say. Freedom’s beacon. They believe themselves to be living as artists do, moving from café to café and meyhane to meyhane in strict rotation. The Green Rooster and Lefter’s. Tosun’s Place and Club 47. (Most of these continue to be traditional locales frequented by artists and writers.) Our new friend Hayalet Oguz introduces Günk and me to Beyoglu by night.

This feeling of the Istanbul be to small for the minds of her and her brothers in a way trhere way of thinking is to much for the homeland in a way!

This is one of those novellas that flies by. It’s a great summer evening read that leaves you thinking for days after and feeling for a woman caught in a world that, even though in my lifetime, looks pretty distant. The treatment she has is rarely used well in the UK these days. I am not sure elsewhere, but the book may capture the chaotic, free-wheeling nature of the writer herself, a woman, and that in a male world would have seemed dangerous or as in her case, in need of treatment 50 years ago. I think this is the perfect start for this woman in translation month as it captures a world gone by in her own country’s history that saw them move forward in some ways after the revolution in 1980. If you haven’t read any female writers from Turkey, this is a great place to start, but the blog also has four other female writers from Turkey who followed Özlü. Have you read this or any other female writers from Turkey?

 

 

Engagement by Ciler Ilhan

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Engagement by Ciler Ilhan

Turkish short stories

Original title – Nişan Evi

Translator – Kenneth Dakan

Source – Review copy

I had promised to review this the other day when I reviewed another book set in the same area of Turkey. That is the southeast part of Turkey, which is mainly Kurdish, and this looks at the village life there. This book deals with an actual event, and that is the massacre that occurred in a village, The Bilge village massacre. This is the second book I reviewed by the Turkish / Dutch writer Ciler Ilhan. The earlier book Exile was also published by Istros, and it hit me hard when I read it as it follows those hours in a village that all that live there call Our village.

Maral had forgotten all about the eau de cologne even though her mother had reminded her two days previously: You can’t hold out a bottle of warm cologne for guests. It’s bought beforehand, kept in the fridge and splashed cold onto cupped palms.’ What a bad start to the day! Surely no good will come of it.

And so, it fell on Halil to get the scent, since Maral and her favorite aunt, never-married Nasibe (in this place, an unmarried woman is an old maid, a spinster or stuck-at-home-so let us say, instead, that Maral and her favorite aunt, the Spinster Nasibe were supposed to go door-to-door to invite guests over for the evening. Maral had her work cut out for her. You see, Nasibe only has one good arm; the left one was stunted and useless. The village had more than its fair share of crazies and cripples. City people came once to do research:

If you people keep marrying each other, a woman in thick-rimmed glasses said, ‘nothing will ever change.’

The opening and the hunt for some Cologne

I had called this a set of short stories, but it may be more of an interlinking novel with the stories following various people in the village as they go through their everyday lives. That evening, Leyle is sent to find some cologne; she is a bride-to-be heading to the next town after her sister Maral had forgotten the eau de cologne a couple of days earlier as they prepare for the forthcoming wedding. Meanwhile, Maral is tasked with reminding all those in the village of the engagement ceremony due to happen that evening. But we have a feeling as the day goes on. Then we have the other town and a history of feuds and actual marriages between the two villages. This latest marriage may have been the final straw, so as the day goes on, the feeling you get as you view what is happening through these short stories and other characters appear Halil is a survivor, having had a close call with death as a kid, will he get through tonight ?. The book turns up the dark feeling, and the story is told bit by bit the history of these villages in a world where one wrong move can lead to dire consequences of death when those that live in these villages have guns!

When Osman popped up like a poisonous mushroom that morning, Halil pursed his full lips. He was peeved.

‘Good morning, he said. ‘Where are you gentlemen off to?’ Hollow-cheeked Osman roared with laughter. As did the guy next to him. The pair of them, in matching pinstripe trousers, mafia-style, were simultaneously bent double and slapping their knees. Halil’s face clouded over. He took a step toward jug-eared Osman and plucked up the courage to grab him by the shoulders, give him a friendly shake and ask what was so funny; but he missed. The guy’s shoulders were like the rest of him, a constantly moving target.

What are you doing here, shithead?’ someone said, and it was Osman again. He lifted his eyebrow, all thoughtful like, when Halil explained about the cologne, and added, ‘Get whatever damn thing you need and then get the hell back to your village.

Other Village was bigger than Our Village, and drier.

The other village her is a sense of the tension and under lying hatred there

I said the image of the book I read last week of dead bodies in a river. This tale is of those villages themselves and why it is so hard for Turkey to control a place where there is such a history of blood feuds and where the villages are isolated from the world they live in is because But the power of this book is it alludes to the event all the way through. It darkens as it goes on. It leads you to the event, but in a folk tale-like way, we see those 16 hours before this engagement party as the bride-to-be hunts cologne, part of the tradition her sister and others plan to go for that evening. Still, as we do, we see what has led to this evening and the constant talk of how their village is our village. It simmers and captures a world where feuds have lasted down family lines over the decades and even centuries. I said I thought she had a powerful voice in my review of Exiles 9 years ago, which still rings true. This writer captures events, feelings, and horror so well in her short stories, and this builds as it goes on. Have you read her or have a favourite Turkish writer?

The wounded Age and Eastern Tales by Ferit edgü

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The Wounded Age and Eastern Tales by Ferit Edgü

Turkish literature

Original title – Doğu Öyküleri & Nijinski Öyküleri

Translator Aron Aji

Source – Personal copy

I move on to a couple of works from Turkey. Firstly, he is an established Turkish writer who has written several books and works as a writer, but he, like many of his contemporaries, chose national service. To become a teacher in the Kurdish area of Turkey. This initial visit to the part of the country was eye-opening and formed the basis of his best-known book, A Season in Hakkari, the region he was sent to. He was shocked by the difference between himself and the locals and how his view of the Kurds differed greatly from the actual region and people. He has since written many books, and this book has two novellas he wrote at a later date, but he writes books about the region still, and these both came out at times of tension and conflict between the Turkish people and the local Kurd population in the area. I will focus on the first novella here.

They escaped with their animals.

Not just horses or mules. Sheep as well, thirty, forty of them.

Most perished on the way, a man says.

He’s not crying. Maybe smiling.

They carried two of the wounded sheep on their shoulders.

He gestures at the big cauldron nearby: Now they’re both in there.

A woman is standing by the boiling cauldron.

Her belly up to her nose.

She uncovers the cauldron, stirs.

A pungent meat smell.

Fate is fate. Born this side of the mountain or the other, makes no difference for the baby.

Is that what she says, I ask Vahap.

Yes, that’s what she says.

And that she’ll name the baby, Ferman —decree.

It’s this land’s custom, Vahap says.

Ferman’s the child born in exile.

As the journalist and interpreter head into the moiuntains he sees those escaping the violence.

As I said, this is all about the Wounded age. Where we follow a journalist as he is sent to the southeastern area of Turkey as the is a rise in conflict and killing in the region as the Kurds try to fight for their freedom. He heads to the mountains and sees the locals as they are firstly trying to escape the Turkish army what will follow when they come in, and the repercussions of the violence from the Kurds as they struggle in their fight for freedom. The massacres happen in the region, with many people dying. This was a starting point for this book when the journalist has a fever-like dream of an old man fishing the great river Zab as he draws his nets in. There are the bodies of the dead woman and children in the nets. When he awakes, he finds it was a dream, but the trauma iof this vision changes his views of the region of the locals and what is happening to them.

This time, I screamed. The old man, still holding on to the net, straightened his body, and, passing the net to his left hand, wiped his sweaty brow with his right hand. I told you to leave, he yelled, this time in my language. Now leave, you saw what you wanted to see. Go the hell away. I started walking backward to the edge, my eyes still fixed on him.

Corpses of women, of children, swept in the current, brushed past my legs. I screamed. When I came to, my heart pounding against its shell, I was sure I woke up in the afterworld.

The old man fishing the Zab and just catching bodies in his net.

Both novellas are set in the Hakkari region of Turkey, which is predominately Kurd in population. Some of the things that the journalist sees and talks about remind me of a friend I had when I worked in a factory in. German, he was from Kosovo, a Kosovian Albanian. When we chatted over the time I worked there about the oppressive nature and society of the Serbians, he also loved Glenn Hoddle, the footballer. So, this is a similar society, and there have been several significant massacres over time. The one that inspired the book still haunts Turkey, and the violence and deaths in the region still need to be addressed as they tried to wipe out the PKK but instead wiped out villages, like in the story where we see a dead woman and children floating in the river. There is a great interview with the translator on the Turkish Books podcast. Where he talks about translating this book, how he discovered Edgu as a writer, and the plan to bring more of his books out and, eventually, A Season in Hakkari. His style is poetic, sparse, and brutal at times with the images of the dead bodies floating in a river. He is a writer who makes an impact on you as a reader. Have you read a book about the Kurdish Conflict?

 

The Innocence of Memories by Orhan Pamuk

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The Innocence of Memories by Orahn Pamuk

Turkish Non-Fiction

Original title -Hatıraların Masumiyeti

Translator – Ekin Oklap

Source – Personal copy

I take a move away from Spanish and Woman in translation. I brought this a week or two ago and just had to read it I have loved Pamuk’s book and was drawn into his love of his hometown Istanbul when he did an episode of the Imagine art series a couple of years ago. This book is about a film he made with the British director Grant Gee about his Musual which came about from the novel he wrote about a distant relative Kemal who married a poorer cousin that is the basis of the novel the Museum of Innocence which I reviewed a when it came out.

I wrote the novel while thinking of the museum, and created the mesum while thinking of the novel, The museum was not just some idea i chanced upon after the succes of the book, nor was it a case of the succes of the Meseum begetting the novel, like the boook  ersion of some blockbuster film, In fact, I conceiived the book and the museum simultanesouly, and explained their intricate connection in the novel; a young man from a wealthy, weesternised Istanbul family falls in love with a poor distant relative, and when hus love goes unrequitted, he finds solace in collecting everything his beloved has ever touched, finally as we learn at the end of the novel hje takes all these everyday objects he has accumlated- post cards, photographsm matchsticks, saltshakers, keys,dress, film clips, and toys, mementos of his doomed love affair and of the Istanbul of the 1970’s and 1980s whose streets he wandered with his lover 0 and puts them on display in Istanbuls Museum of Innocence

The opening paragraph sums up what happened and how it all came about!

The book is formed from the audio tour of the Museum which won the best European Museum in 2014. The idea had been in Pamuk’s mind since the 1990s when he started to collect things as he says in the book the city had started to change at such a pace he needs to keep some of the past there. o when he found the 2000 cigarettes Kemal had kept smoked by Fusun with the touches of her lipstick that he, as he said, wrote a novel that became a real museum. HE brought there home and the floors above and he has made a place that captures what it was like to be Kemal and Fussun at that point. The guide has Orhan talking, Kemal, and people they knew. Then Orhan saw a film by the English Director Grant Gee the one he made about Sebald’s book the rings of Saturn, I myself have watched this film a number of times myself. So he asked if Grant could do a film on this and they met this is a later section in the book where he tells of him and Grant wandering the city for eight hours talking and Gee talks of his lover of Maker’s work especially Sans Soleil another work I like what they came about with is a film that is the title of the book is also the title of the work that Grant Gee and Orhan Pamuk made together I have yet to see this but will love it.

AYLA: There is no daylight in the Museum of Innocence. It feels like night and dreaming. Perhaps this is why it was so easy for me to feel at home there. Once I found myself starting with a powerful sense of Deja vu at a photograph of a salep vendor on the Galata Bridge at night. It took me a while to realise that, like many of the other photographs in the meseum, it is by Ara Giuler. Like all Istanbullus of my generation, I have seen some of his photographs o many times that I confuse them with my own memories of the city

I lived this reaction and the theme of the night and the city is here

I think this is a book that most people that read this blog will love. It has a lot of traits that I like a book around memories I love books that talk about the past about what has been lost and her it is the Istanbul of his youth and at its heart the love story. of Kemal and Fusun even thou it is doomed. This has inspired a novel, a film, and a Museum. The book is interspersed with pictures of the museum and exhibits. What leaps out of the book is his love of Istanbul especially at night and the way it used to be the lost place the streets have gone things like the wild dogs wandering the streets. He talked about this on the Imagine show and how he wandered at night. Have you read any Non-fiction by Pamuk?

Winstons score – A A ode to a book and city

 

10 minutes 38 seconds in this strange world by Elif Shafak

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10 minutes 38 seconds in this strange world by Elif Shafak

British Turkish fiction

Source – Library

I briefly met Elif when she was a judge at the IFFP prize a number of years ago. So when this made the Booker shortlist this year with a few other books I had been interested in I decide to do a little challenge of reading them and this was the first book of the list it is Elif’s eleventh novel I had reviewed an earlier book by her Honour. She has written books in both English and Turkish. She also speaks of women’s rights, minority rights, Freedom of speech and of course Turkey.

She saw herself as a baby – Naked, slick and red.Only a few seconds earlier she had lefther mother’s womb and slid througha wet, slippery passage, gripped by fear wholly new to her, and here she was now in a room full of sounds and colours and things unkown. Sunlight through the stained glass windows dappled the quilt on the bed and reflected off the water in a porcelain basin, despite it being a chillyday in January. Into that same water an elderly woman dressed in shades of autumn leaves- the midwife-dipped a towel and wrung it out, blood trickling down her forearm.

Mashallah, mashalla its a girl

The midwife took a piece of flint, which sha had tucked awayin her bra and cut the ummbilical cord.

I loved the image of the flint in the midwifes hand cutting the cord.

 

This book focus on what would be in a paper may be a small byline and brief description and that is the murder of a prostitute. The Prostitute in by the name is called Tequilla Leila as she is upturned in a bin her life is drifting away and for the last ten minutes she remembers smells that recall her life in parts as each smell leads to a Proustian recall. From Salt which takes her back to her birth and the midwife cutting her from her mother with a piece of Flint. Then Lemon and sugar and the Grand house of her youth that once belonged to an Armenian doctor each minute drifts by and her life moves forward and the smell of Cardamon coffee and the reason she heads to Istanbul and into the brothels after an event with an Uncle. She falls in with five friends that become her second family a man besotted with her and transvestite, a dwarf a singer and a stunning Somalian. Their stories intertwine with Leila own as the minutes tick down her life draws to an end. To a last taste of the strawberry cake and the second half of the book that starts in the morgue and sees what happens with her friends and the aftermath of Tequilla’s Leila life.

Zaynab was born a thousand miles away from Istanbul, in an isolated mountain village in Northern Lebanon. Fpr generations the Sunni famlies in the area had only intermarried, and dwarfism was so common in the village that they often attracted visitors from the outside world- Journalists, scientists and the like. Zaynabs brothers and sisters were average sizes and when the time came they would marry, one after another. Among her siblings she alone had inherited her [arents condition, both of them little people

One of the side stories of her friends the dwarf Zaynab !

I loved the first half of the book the Proustian remembrance of Lelia’s life as she laid dying as the tastes of her life from the salt of her skin and being cut from her mother with a sharpened piece of flint to a strawberry cake each leads to events in the life and shows how one event turns this woman life but also lead her into a different group of friends this is a side character of a Pamuk novel brought to Life this is a colorful view of the Brothels of Istanbul and shows how each woman there has her own story of how they end up there and turned into a beautiful work of fiction that brings to life their world. A strange fact is that there is a woman in a bin in duck Newburyport which I am a third into already. I have read a number of other books from Istanbul but none has brought to life this underbelly of the city!

 

Istanbul Istanbul by Burhan Sönmez

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Istanbul Istanbul by Burhan Sönmez

Turkish fiction

Original title – İstanbul İstanbul

Translator – Umit Hussein

Source – personnel copy

I reach the second book from the three of the EBRD shortlist I have to read and this title was the one I knew very little around. Burhan is a prize-winning Turkish writer. He grew up speaking both Turkish and Kurdish. He moved to Istanbul to become a lawyer, he then took up writing first poetry, where he won two national poetry prizes. Then he turned his hand to writing novels this is his third novel his books have been translated into twenty languages. He now teaches literature.

It was cold in our cell. While I was telling the Doctor my story, Kamo the Barber lay curled on the bare concrete floor. We had no covers, we warned ourselves by huddling together, like puppies. Because time had stood still for several day we had no idea if it was day or night. We knew what pain was, every day we relived the horror that clamped our hearts as we were led away to be tortured.

Demirtay in the opening story talking about life in the cell for them.

This book is set just after the military coup in the prison in Istanbul. We are hearing the tales of four prisoners Demirtay the student, the doctor, Kamo the barber and Uncle Kuheylan. The four are being held and tortured.In between the guards taking them the four keep their spirits alive by telling stories from their lives.To spring their minds from outside there windowless cell  As they do they bring the city above them to life. From a meeting with one of those huge white dogs that grew up around this part of the world. A princess that has escaped from the Harem that has snuck on a boat and hidden in a lifeboat.But as one of them is told the stories have to reveal as little about themselves as the cell may be bugged so what we get is slightly fantastic stories. Thjis is interspersed with graphic images of torture particularly later on in the book a scene when a hammer is hit into a wrist is very hard hitting.

“A girl boarded a large ship in the port of Istanbul with great stealth, climbed up the steps, and hid in a large lifeboat. She wrapped herself in a sail and strained her ears to listen to any sound coming from outside.Once the ship had set sail she heaved a sigh of relief. Time aboard passed between sleep and wakefulness. She listened to the crew singingWhen the ship anchored in a port, she waited until evrything had turned quiet and darkness had fallen. She descended the steps unseen by anyone, and started running. She was heading towards a new world

A woman escapes the world of istanbul by a ship but what is here fate ?

 

This is an interesting book that brings the streets of Istanbul to life through the eyes of four men on the edge. There is a harder edge to this than Pamuk’s Istanbul this is the city we don’t see all the time the one of secret prisons and those trying to keep their minds open like the descriptions in Calvino’s Invisible cities the city comes to life. The book uses the four men in the cell as a framing device for the tales they tell each other this is like the Decameron or the Canterbury tales where we see a group using tales to illustrate their lives or values. These tales are in place love stories a little raunchy at times. But also the real side of life in a huge city at times. Tales that show how minds can transcend walls and iron doors that hold these four men in the dark there broken bodies and their minds not yet broken. This is what I had hope the books from the EBRD would be like a prize like this is why I read translated books to discover gems.

The Red-haired Woman by Orhan Pamuk

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The red-haired Woman by Orhan Pamuk

Turkish fiction

Original title –  Kırmızı saçh kadın

Translator Ekin Oklap

Source – Library copy

Another from the list of books I missed last year and another I feel may be on the man booker prize. I love Orhan Pamuk he is one of those Nobel winners that write good books every time not knock out of the park books. I have enjoyed all the books by him I have read and have so far reviewed three of his books. It was nice this book was shorter than his recent books which have both been over 500 pages long.

I had wanted to be a writer. But after the events I am about to describe, I studied engineering, geologyand became a building contractor. Even so, readers shouldn’t conclude from my telling the story now that it is over, that I’ve put it all behind me. The more I remember , the deeper I fall into it. Perhap you, too, will follow, lured by the enigma of father and sons

The opening lines set Cems past and present out and what is still haunting him even today.

This is the story of two men digging a well. Their relationship is almost a father and son one as the story unfolds. They are digging a well on the edge of Istanbul in the traditional technique. Mahmut the master well builder is using his age-old knowledge to tell his apprentice. Cem the apprentice is a man who has grown up with an absent father so the regular stories and talks Mahmut and Him have as the work down the ground as the work the ground looking for water to help supply the factory.Then one day the woman of the title appears the red-haired woman a member of a travelling company captures his eye.But also leads to an incident with his master.Then we meet him years later with his own wife and son. He is riddled with guilt for the past.Although he is a successful engineer but not the writer he had dreamed of being. He has an incident with his own son. Then we have the last section of the novel, is  going over the first section from the eyes of the red-haired woman.

As the horse and I reached the open doorway, two more figures emerged: first, a man, maybe five or six years older than I was, and then a tall, red-haired woman who might have been his elder sister.There was something unusual, and very alluring, about this woman. Maybe the lady in jeans was the mother of this red-haired woman and her little brother.

His first sighting of the red-haired woman one that lingers in his mind over the years.

This is a retelling of the old Oedipus Rex story of a son killing a father and the reverse a father causing the sons death. Is a story of how we talk Cem struggles to talk to his own real father a man more caught up in his Dissident movement, so his adopt father Mahmut becomes a father figure as they do the hard work working the well but one moment cause an accident that he blames himself for the rest of his life. In the present, he has another incident with his own son life. Then we have the red-haired woman as a sort of temptress that cause problems from the moment she meets Cem and causes him problems for his life. Less complex than his recent books but still full of thew twist and turns you expect from Pamuk and of course the shadow of Istanbul is always in his stories.

Two green otters by Buket Uzuner

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Two Green Otters

Two green otters by Buket Uzuner

Turkish fiction

Original title – İki Yeşil Susamuru, Anneleri, Babaları, Sevgilileri ve Diğerleri

Translator – Alexander Dawe

Source – review copy

It wasn’t so long ago when there wasn’t many Turkish novels available outside those by Orhan Pamuk was small , but this last couple of years a few more writers have appeared and a number of strong female voices from Turkey Buket Uzuner I would count in that group like Birgul Oguz and Ciler Ilhan that I have reviewed in recent years shining a light on the female experience of modern Turkish life . Buket studied biology and environmental studies before becoming a writer.

That year a lot of my friends parents got divorced, and we picked on each other in a way that only children can do . We’d say , “Yours aren’t divorced yet ? That’s so uncool, and then we’d laugh. These days I often run into those old friends of mine and nobody laughs about it the way we used to .

Those parents who were leaving hom at the time started up another trend : They’d move to “undiscovered” little towns and villages on the mediterranean coast. Sevin, my mom’s friend from college, was the first in our family to get divorced.Ner husband Semih, an electrical engineer, moved to Bodrum with a young actress and opened a restaurant

I connect with this passage as my own parents split and like Nilsu it was rare in this time for parents to divorce.

The book is the story of  one young womans life in the 1980’s Nilsu has lost her mother how has abandon her at maybe the most important point in her life the verge of adulthood. Her mother took off and this has left the young woman struggling to trust and vulnerable to the wider world at this point she meets the enigmatic Teo who is the leader of a green party in the Turkey . The two fall for each other but hold off on doing anything that is until Teo own mother takes her life and leads him to a downspiral with only Nilsu to help him out as the two draw closer and his political world becomes more turbulent. They try to help them get back to the calmer side of life and carry on with their lives .

“We can talk about Thoreau , Gandhi , Tolstoy and Schumacher “, he said , full of zeal, “but Lao-Tse was the grandfather of them all! Now there is Foucault , and maybe me!” around the same time Siddhartha was making waves in europe and thanks again to Ulla , Teoman got a copy- she still sends him books now and then – hut he knew how differently such a book would affect European Christians and Mediterranean Muslims.

This shows how when books get translated the power they can have over those that read them !!

This is a wonderful insight into how a young woman struggles to get by through in their own world especially in what in Turkey is a very Male oriented society add to the lix her involvement with the green movement at a time when Turkey was just getting over the last of a number of military coups that had happened during the 197o’s . A country that had decide to start looking to the west and is growing, but the green movement is the flipside of this growth. Nilsu and Teo are the new face of Turkey the fresh-faced willing to stand alone and willing to sand together finding strength together in the end as they stop each other from diving into the depths of despair .A great insight into Turkey at the time just as it is waking up to the world maybe and a great leap forward .

 

 

Hah by Birgül Oğuz

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Hah Birgul Oguz

Hah by Birgül Oğuz

Turkish Fiction

Translators –

Kenneth Dakan, Alexander Dawe, mark Wyers, Alev Ersan, Arzu Akbatur, Abigail Bowman, Feyza Howell, Amy Spangler and kate ferguson.

Original title Haha

Source – Review copy

When this dropped through the letterbox earlier this year, i noted on twitter that it was one of my favourite covers the lonely dog on the cover maybe lets you into more what is on the inside. that is one woman getting to grip with her own fathers death. This collection won the European union prize for literature in 2014 and meant this wonderfully short book could get a wider audience. Birgul lives in Istanbul and has written both fiction and non fiction in her time.

MY MOTHER DIDN’T GIVE BIRTH TO ME. On a whim she left me there under an acacia. And it came to be that I found myself at the foot of Acacia. It rustled and I held on, rustled and I held on. When I was still no larger than a bean I became the dark shadow of that looming tree.

Thank God my mother set me free too soon. I am cool and I am alone. I am the image and the shadow and the oasis to the spirit of the acacia, dripping from its heavy boughs. sentence is anguish to the soul and I never tasted of it. I am solitude. I am that which is distant to the world.

The opening lines of Hah which as I noted has Acacia trees in it as a motif

 

This is one of those books that falls between the lines of what it is a novella in stories, prose pieces or short stories. What we get is abstract poetic stories as one woman struggles to find the way to deal with her father’s death. His past as he grew up in the violent years of Turkish rule in the late 1960’s. There is recurring motifs like acacia trees which crop up in more than one story I feel the wider brim of the acacia is a metaphor for the lost father in a way . Metaphor as well water trickling is like her father’s life as it trickled away from him. A journey through the ways we mourn those closest  to us.We also see the old Turkish life and the modern Turkish world clashing.

She stepped outside. She felt the cold slap her across her face and – clack!- the tongue of the door snapped into place.She hurried down the fig-lined road and , as she turned into Long Meadow Street, shook off three word from the branches of her mind:time, paper, death

The acacia began to sway back and forth with rage of the wind, at its roots lay those three acrid words, fallen like unripe fruit. Then it bent down heavily, as if to unload its entire weight onto that of the morning in an aching march, delivering a clumsy sentence in a voice dark and deep yet vaporous.

Acacia again from one of the last stories but a bent broken tree now .

This is a short work 88 pages long and as I said is hard to pin down thew language is rich and given the fact it was worked on at a ten-day workshop for Turkish literature means you can see how many translators have tighten Birguls words to the beautiful piece we get here. Another triumph for world editions rarely do we see such short works as this translated into English. Birgul uses a variety of styles from poetic prose , to songs  and short stories as she put in her winning speech for the european union Literature prize  she wove these styles together like a cloth. She started writing the book after the loss of her own father. As her way to deal with the rage and loss of her father she also said this in her winning interview. A great new voice from Turkey to read.

Have you a favourite Turkish writer ?

A strangeness in my mind by Orhan Pamuk

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Well for the 600th book to be reviewed on the blog it is fitting that it is a translated novel by a Nobel winner. I have reviewed Orhan Pamuk twice before on the blog silent house and the museum of innocence , I have also read snow , my name is read and The white castle before I started blogging, its fair to say Orhan Pamuk is one of those Nobel winners that fit into the writes good not great books I have loved every book by him I have read. This is maybe his grandest book as it tackles Four decades of Istanbul life. Writers and their cities Joyce with Dublin , Doblin in Berlin and Pamuk with Istanbul. This time he has seen the city through one man and the extended network he has.

This is the story of the life and daydreams of Mevlut Karatas, a seller of Boza and yoghurt. Born in 1957 on the western edge of Asia, in a poor village overlooking a hazy lake in central Anatolia, he came to Istanbul at the age of twelve, living there, in the capital of the world, for the rest of his life. When he was twenty-five, he returned to the province of his birth, where he eloped with a village girl.

The intro Mevlut (the del boy of Turkey) goes to town only to return for his girl.

THe main character in A strangeness in mind is Mevlut, he like many of his generation was drawn to the ever-expanding Istanbul. Like many a young man well he was twelve at the time in search of money and a new life. Of course like many broken dreams Mevlut never quite get where he wants, he is rather like a Turkish Del boy in that way he tries different jobs Selling yoghurt, guarding a car park and always drawn back to selling the Boza in the evenings as he tries to escape the world he is in.

Following months of endless debate, they decide that these letters should be based not on Mevlut’s notions about women but rather on what he knew about Rayiha in particular. Since the only aspect of Rayiha known to Mevlut was her eyes, logic dictated that they should be the focus of the letters .

Mevlut meets her and then in a chater we find out how he started writing love letters to her .

Add to this the love affair between Mevlut and Rayiha, part of the novel is formed of the love letters he sends her back to the village they come from, eventually after a few years she comes and joins him and they are married have kids but their life is tough hence the roles of second jobs Mevlut has to have to make ends meet during the book. As he struggles to fill the role of man of the house that is expected of him.As he says maybe he has a strangeness in my mind , he is a daydreamer!

Through all this feverish activity, the authorities could still send the gendarmes to a hastily built home and knock it down whenever they felt like it or found it politically expedient to do so. The keywas to finish building the house and start living in it as soon as possible. If a house had occupants, it could not be demolished without a warrant, and this could take time to obtain. As soon as they had chance anyone who claimed a plot of land on a hill would , provided they had any sense, recruit their friends and family to help them put up four walls over night then move in immediately so that the demolition crews couldn’t touch them next day.

The slums grow and are knocked down if you aren’t clever enough to claim your spot .

THen the third main character in the book is the background that is the city ever shifting from the early days when he arrives we see how the city grows but like an unruly plant has to be tend and cut back and the parts that are cut back are the parts of the city that Mevlut and his friends live in the slums. Filled with the little people who keep this huge city running and the people who live their in the background , the sellers , the guards , the cleaners the once that never get really notice. The ones that are drawn their by dreams and eventually like where they live crumbled in their dreams.

A huge novel in scope this is maybe  his most ambitious novel. As he takes an almost Dickensian look at the city he so loves and those that are on its underbelly. The inner working those we know but don’t always see the Mevlut yes he is like Del Boy dreams of that one big break but we know in our heart it will never come.I said the other day maybe writers don’t write their best books after winning the big prize. But possibly Pamuk is bucking that trend.

A strangeness in my mind by Orhan Pamuk

Turkish fiction

Translator – Ekin Oklap

 

Exiles by Çiler İlhan

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Exiles by  Çiler İlhan

Turkish – short stories

 

Original title –  Sürgün

Translator –  Ayşegül Toroser Ateş

 

Source – review copy

Wear something bright and turn away
Imagine girls behaving in that way
Why don’t you pack your bags and leave?
Look here’s another bruise I didn’t see

You can’t say, it doesn’t really matter
This isn’t T.V., he isn’t William Shatner
Oh, I’ve told you before

These days, you look so pale and thin
Wave down the bus and let’s be rid of him
You’ve spent this night beside your T.V. set
Remember when you used to laugh at it, you laughed a bit

You can’t say, it doesn’t really matter
This isn’t T.V., he isn’t William Shatner
Oh, I’ve told you before

I choose a song from my youth that struck me about how tv heroes hitting women don’t make it ok .

Another book from Istros and this is another EU literature  prize winner .Çiler İlhan is a Turkish writer . She started of studying political science and then hotel management .Taking up a career in hotel business ,whilst writing in her spare time .She currently works as editor in chief for Conde nast traveller in Turkey and lives in Istanbul  .She has won prizes in Turkey for her short stories , this is her first collection to be published in english .

The three of them suddenly came into my room one night . I saw that my favourite brother , the youngest of my big brothers , had a cable in his hand ! He wrapped it around my throat before I could ask what was going on . he started tightening it .

An honour killing told from the victims point of view in My brother

One word left my mouth after reading this collection WOW .This collection of short stories , well I call them flash monologues myself as Ciler draws the world around her from the American army being in Iraq across the border and what that brings to Turkish life .Then for me the most powerful part of the book is a collection of voices around Honour killing of a sister by a brother  and the way we see this incident from all sides brings the horror to full view .There is a series of recurrent themes  like Batman being a women in Turkey and Iraqi  as the book is divide into five sections with the titles Exile a short one story section crime revenge and cry make up the three middle sections each with stories that are mirrored in the other sections here .and a final section called return with a story that mirrors the first section .

Some kind hearthad brought us a whole load of leftovers and we were full . In good spirits , I mean . Us stray dogs can’t always find something to eat . Some days we just cannot , you understand , but that day we had ; lucky us .And as we what nothing else to do , we were chillin .

Baby girl has another of the themes in the stories dogs and stray dogs .

The power in these collection is the clarity of the voice behind the stories .The stories as I say are very short but the power is in that the punch isn’t drawn out it just smacks you in the face and lets your jaw drop .I think the EU lit prize page about this book winning the prize has it when it quotes Einstein “A formula should be simple as possible and not simpler ” .I was reminded in a way of Alan Bennetts talking heads ,but these have much more impact to the reader these are the espresso of the lit world short and very strong in taste .I think yet again istros has discovered a powerful voice from a country where we have so few translated into English . More important than that a great short story writer ,I struggle with short stories but this for me is the sort of collection that works for me I love recurring themes and the subjects touched in this collection are ones I want to know more about . Have you a favourite book from Turkey ?

Silent House by Orhan Pamuk

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silent_house

Silent House by Orhan Pamuk

Turkish Fiction

Original title Sessiz Ev

Translator Robert Finn

Source – Personnel copy

Well I ve read four Pamuk Novels before this one and as is the case in the world of translation ,I’ve read them out-of-order of publications in Turkish I start with my name is read followed by Snow then Back to an earlier book Whit Castle ,then his latest the Museum of Innocence.Now this has arrived in English and was the second novel written by Orhan Pamuk , but is the ninth to be published in English and the first to be translated by Robert Finn .I have previously mention a lot about Pamuk in the other books I reviewed ,he is Turkeys best known writer and has won the Nobel prize for literature .This book is a double hit for me as it is the fourth from the Man Asian Short-list I ‘ve read but also the tenth book I ve reviewed from this year’s independent foreign fiction prize .

But tomorrow they’ll come and I’ll think again . Hello ,hello how are you ,they’ll kiss my hand ,many happy returns ,how are you ,Grandmother ,how are you ,how are you , Grandmother ? I’ll take a look at them .Don’t all talk at once ,come here let me have a look at you ,come close ,tell me what you have been doing ? I know I’ll be asking to be fooled and I’ll listen blankly to a few words of description!

Fatima the night before the hoards descend on here

So Silent House well the title is a bit of joke because this is anything but a book about silence or a silent house .The book is set in the early eighties a turbulent time in Turkey and we are with Fatima and yes at start as she await the hoards to descend (her extended family of grandchildren to arrive for the summer ).The family arrive one by one and each member of the family is like a jigsaw piece as they arrive we learn a bit more about the family ,but also about turkey as a whole as each one of her grandchildren represent a different face of turkey Faruk is the idealist a troubled historian ,the sister Nilgun that is part of a new elite in turkey with money ,a drop-out ,a right-winger ,As they arrive the hose becomes very vocal and the house becomes a micro version of The turkey of the time .The book is set in 1980 just a coup is in the offering .

It’s well after midnight ,but I can still hear them moving about what could they be doing down there ,why don’t they go to sleep and leave me the silent night ? I get out of bed ,walk over to the window ,and look down :Recap’s ;light is still on ,lighting up the garden:what are you doing there ,dwarf ? It’s frighting ! he’s so sneaky ,that one every once in a while I catch him giving me a look ,and I realize he notices everything about me , watching the smallest gestures ,

The house is loud and what does Recap the dwarf know ?

Where does this lie in the body of Pamuk’s work ,well it is very different as one would imagine with a second novel .The book is a book of voices but also a clever way of discussing the turkey of the time without Pamuk using his own voice as he uses the myriad of character in this book to show the troubles with in his own country ,but also to show how these troubles affect people on a personal every day level .The children also in there own ways show how politics effect people in different way , burying your head in the bottle ,being to rich too notice troubles ,joining a gang of fascists and following the latest causes .Then there is Fatima her self the sort of women that runs a large family in her ninties but has the respect of all and she also has a dwarf servant Recap .I did enjoy this more than I have recent Pamuk novels .Now the question is would this have been better published at the time ,part of me thinks yes then another part thinks it is still happening turkey is still a country with many faces and problems of its own and the book still shows how far they have come and how far they have to go .

Have you read this book ?

Do you have a favourite Orhan Pamuk ? mine is my name is red

Honour by Elif Shafak

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Honour-Elif-Shafak1

Honour by Elif Shafak

Turkish fiction

source Library copy

Elif Shafak is one of the most prolific writers of Turkish origins around today ,she writes in both Turkish and English .Raised by her single mother as her parents seperated when she was just one year old she grew up in various place round Europe ,She has been longlisted for the IMPAC prize  and her novels have also caused much discussion in Turkey .Honour is her eight novel .

My mother died twice .I promised myself I would not let her story be forgotten ,but I could never find the time or the will or the courage to write about it .That is ,until recently .I don’t think I’ll ever become a real writer and that’s quite all right now .

The opening lines as the daughter of Pembe tries to tell us her story .

 

Honour is the story of a family set over three generations and from turkey to London at the heart of the story is Twin sisters and a man .Pembe the sister that wins the man moves to london with her young family .she settles in seventies London .That is one strand the next is in the present day about her son and daughter ,the son has been in Shrewsbury prison for 14 years because he killed Pembe .His sister is now preparing for his return .The third strand is following the grandmother as she kept giving birth to girls .So we see how from the grandmother to the grand-daughter how things have and haven’t changed for turkish women .Well I say Turkish that is another thread this family is half Kurdish .

Adem had spent his entire childhood torn between two fathers his sober Baba and his drunken Babe .The two men lived in the same body .But they were as different from each other as night from day.So sharp was the contrast between them that Adem suspected the drink his father drowned every evening to be some kind of magic potion .

Adem the man who chose Pembe but loved her sister .

I love Shafak style of writing it is lush and hints at magic realism with out ever falling full length into it, the book  has echoes of both writers like Pamuk but also a large chunk of Gabriel Garcia Marquez especially in scope I was reminded of books like Love in the time of Cholera and 100 Years .But this is part of where I found myself struggling maybe it is too much this felt like a great trilogy of three generations stuck into one book .I loved will Self’s umbrella this has a similar feel at times as we cross time to see the family history woven together.I loved the family and especially the time in London in the seventies it so reminded me of bits from my own childhood .I feel if you’re looking for an insight into how Turkish families work from the female point of view this is the book for you .This was my first book for this years shadow man asian  I m staying in turkey for my next read as I read the Pamuk from the shortlist a book set in turkey at the same time this book is set in London .I may also note that Elif has been picked as one of this years jurors for the independent foreign fiction prize .

Have you read her books ?