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Archive for the 'Books' Category

Swords of Ice

Synopsis
Halilhan Sunteriler, would-be entrepreneur, rescues from the scrap heap a red Volvo, which he believes will lead him to big money in business ventures. So he solicits the help of his staunch friend Gogi, the most “cultured” man of the neighborhood, and gradually Halilhan’s two younger brothers, Hazmi and Mesut, are also drawn into the [...]

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Biography of the Author
Elif Shafak, born 1971 in Strasbourg, spent her teenage years in Spain before returning to Turkey. She is an outstanding name amongst young Turkish authors, and has written four novels and won the Mevlana Prize for the best work in mystical and transcendental literature. She holds a masters degree in Women’s Studies [...]

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Synopsis:*
Prominent writers in Britain praise The Other Side of the Mountain:
“This is a remarkable and important novel, a powerful evocation not only of Turkish history through the twentieth century, but also of world history and of the interweaving of nationalism and ideology. The passages set in Cambridge are beautiful. The blending of the personal and [...]

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Synopsis:*
A vital part of modern Turkish literature, Hikmet (1902-1963) was a poet whose lyrics, as sung by leftist performers such as Pete Seeger, had international resonance, and whose repeated imprisonments drew protests from the likes of Pablo Picasso and Jean-Paul Sartre. This novel in verse, written during one long prison sentence in the 1940s, [...]

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Synopsis:*
Turkey’s greatest novelist, Yashar Kemal is an unsurpassed storyteller who brings to life a world of staggering violence and hallucinatory beauty. Kemal’s books delve deeply into the entrenched social and historical conflicts that scar the Middle East. At the same time scents and sounds, vistas of mountain and stream and field, rise up from the [...]

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Bliss

Synopsis:*
Fifteen-year-old Meryem lives in a rural village in Eastern Anatolia, Turkey. Her simple, conventional way of life changes dramatically after her uncle, a sheikh in a dervish order, rapes her—and condemns her to death for shaming the family. Asked to carry out the “honor killing” is his son Cemal, a commando in the Turkish army. [...]

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The Messegner Boy Murders

Synopsis
From a popular and innovative Turkish author, The Messenger Boy Murders is a darkly comic,  irreverent and hypnotic tale, an exploration of humanity’s endless absurdity and its futile attempts to create perfection, cleverly wrapped in a murder mystery.

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