The latest addition to my website is Diamela Eltit‘s Vaca sagrada (Sacred Cow). This is a feminist, post-modern novel by a Chilean writer who stayed in Chile during the Pinochet regime. She tells the story of a woman who has two messy, violent relationships, with violence on both sides, showing indirectly, in the relationships, the … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Olga Grjasnowa‘s Gott ist nicht schüchtern (City of Jasmine). Grjasnowa is an Azerbaijan-born German national, married to a Syrian. This novel primarily takes place during the recent Syrian Civil War. We follow the fate of three Syrians caught up in it. Hammoudi has studied medicine in Paris and … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Valeria Luiselli‘s
The latest addition to my website is Guzel Yakhina‘s Зулейха открывает глаза (Zuleikha). Zuleikha is a Tatar woman, married to an abusive husband, in the late 1920s. Her husband is determined that the Soviets will not have any of his food and he hides. When he is caught and objects, he is shot on the … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Elif Shafak‘s Baba ve Piç (The Bastard of Istanbul). This book tells the story of two families, one a Turkish family living in Istanbul and the other an Armenian family, living in the US, with most of their ancestors having been killed in the Armenian Genocide. Both families … Read more
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