Turkish Author Book Of The Month In London

[ceemac]

Nobel Laureate Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk's latest book "The Museum of Innocence" was chosen as the book of the month by leading British bookseller Waterstone's.

Here


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[Sunny Seasider]

I've just started to read Birds Without Wings by Louis Bernieres, first three chapters and I'm into it, it's going to be good. Thanks for your thread, we have a Waterstones in town, another added to my list. I love reading.

 

[christinecarne]

I have just finished Birds Without Wings. A wonderful book but with so much information I think I'll have to read it again! Highly recommended.

 

[shirleyanntr]

For once he is keeping out of politics with this latest book..theres no doubt he is a first class writer..but i find him very difficult..hes never an easy read..too allegorical for me..i like to call a spade a spade.
Maybe this latest read will be worth a look at.

 

[geordie_nev]

I enjoyed reading Pamuk’s book “Snow” but found “My Name is Red” really hard going. I might give his new book a go.

I was given two books by Yashar Kemal for Christmas “They Burn the Thistles” and “Wind from the Plain”, he was Turkey’s most internationally recognized authors until Orhan Pamuk. His books are said to give great insight into the rural south east Turkey during the 1920’s – 30’. I’ve made a little start on “They Burn the Thistles”, one of a four book series on “slim Memed” a Robin Hood type character who tries to defend his village against greedy landlords would steal land from the farmers etc. If you like the village scenes and characters in “Birds without Wings” you might like to read Kemal’s books? I was relieved to find the book is very easy read as well.

Here’s a couple of extracts from the books introduction:

Before the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, American military officers were reportedly screening The battle of Algiers, looking for insights into urban warfare and Muslim militancy. They would have done well to hand out Yashar Kemel’s They Burn the Thistles, too – partly because it’s set in the general area we’re now enmeshed in (more specifically, in the Taurus Mountains of Turkish Anatolia) but much more because it’s one of the finest accounts anywhere in literature of clannish peasant worldview.

The Village of Vayvay, where most of the action takes place, is old and rooted in the fertile soil of the Anavarza plain. That fertility makes life sweet, and Kemal invokes it over and over again in his descriptions, some of the most hypnotically incantatory nature writing I know.

*****

This is a lesson Westerners might have learned better before they found themselves in the thorn forests of the Iraq adventure. Our fight has turned out to be less with radical Islam than with radical identity, with the very old very deep attachments to place and to each other that mark the societies we now fight. In our mobility and hyper-individualism we can scarcely conceive of such ties, and the meaning that adheres to them. But they come very much alive in this account. Half the world is explained in these pages, the half we need very badly to understand.

Yashar Kemal himself has a really interesting life story; lost an eye in knife accident as a small boy, saw his father brutally murdered at 5 years old which left him almost unable to speak for most of his youth. Etc etc.

YaÅŸar Kemal - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Els]

Thanks for the tips Geordie nev. My reading list is getting longer and longer! Orhan Pamuk certainly is not easy to read. I did manage to read all of "Snow" but it was a bit of a struggle. If anyone has read this latest book I would be interested to hear if they enjoyed it.

 

[shirleyanntr]

İ have a book (in turkish) which has a similar story..its called Demirci Mehmet Efe-1 a true story by İbrahim Kiraz..its the first book ive tackled in Turkish and its a bit hard going..but the interest is making me plod on.