The latest addition to my website is Oya Baydar‘s Kayıp Söz (The Lost Word). This is a superb novel about a famous Turkish writer, Ömer Eren, who has lost his word, i.e. has writer’s block. We follow his attempt to deal with this, when, at Ankara bus station, he meets a Kurdish couple, The wife … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Aslı Erdoğan‘s Kırmızı Pelerinli Kent (The City in Crimson Cloak). This novel is set entirely in Rio de Janeiro and tells the story of a Turkish woman, Özgur, who has been living there for two years. She hates the city, the squalor, the violence, the drugs, the heat … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Bilge Karasu‘s Gece (Night), a blistering post-modern, Kafkaesque parable which could be Turkey but also could be any other police state. There are essentially three things going on. The first is the night workers, symbolically representing the secret police, who come out at night and randomly arrest, torture … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Güneli Gün‘s On the Road to Baghdad. This is an excellent picaresque novel using magic realism and clearly influenced by the One Thousand and One Nights. Our heroine, Hürü, born in late 15th century Constantinople, is the daughter of a former Karaman prince. When he and his wife … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Adalet Ağaoğlu‘s Curfew. This novel is set in Turkey, primarily Istanbul and Eskişehir, in June 1980, three months before a coup will take place. We follow the story of seven main characters, all linked to one another. In all cases, the story tells of their history but also … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Buket Uzuner‘s Kumral Ada Mavi Tuna (Mediterranean Waltz). This is a complicated novel about love and war. Duna Atacan, as a five year old boy, meets Ada Mercan, two years his senior, whose family – the parents are both famous actors – has moved near to his family. … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Dawn Powell‘s The Wicked Pavilion. This is another wicked mocking of New York society from Powell, this one set around the Café Julien, where all the characters pass through at some time during the book. We follow tales of love gone wrong, ambitious people thwarted in their ambitions, … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Chloe Aridjis‘ Sea Monsters. It tells the story of Luisa, a seventeen year old Mexican girl in 1988. She has no siblings and few friends. She is not close to her parents, who have their own preoccupations. She is not particularly interested in her school work or her … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Dawn Powell‘s The Locusts Have No King. This is a love story, about the many vicissitudes in the love life of Frederick Olliver, a struggling but very serious writer, and Lyle Gaynor, a married and successful playwright (with the plays written jointly with her invalid, sexually incapable husband). … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Rabeah Ghaffari‘s To Keep the Sun Alive. This novel has two related stories. The first tells of an extended family in Iran before the 1979 Iranian Revolution and as the revolution unfolds. The various members have different views on the political situation, from the liberal to the religious … Read more