{"id":69680,"date":"2013-04-17T15:53:20","date_gmt":"2013-04-17T12:53:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/?p=69680"},"modified":"2014-01-08T11:22:32","modified_gmt":"2014-01-08T09:22:32","slug":"turkish-literature-to-look-out-for","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/2013\/04\/17\/turkish-literature-to-look-out-for\/","title":{"rendered":"Turkish literature to look out for"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Sameer Rahim<\/p>\n

\"muge_iplikci\"
M\u00fcge \u0130plik\u00e7i<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Visitors to Istanbul usually stay close to the old town, where Byzantine relics vie with Ottoman splendour. They walk in the footsteps of European travel writers from Nerval to Flaubert, who were attracted by its oriental aspects: caliphs, harems and dervishes. As Orhan Pamuk writes in his enchanting memoir Istanbul, Eastern strangeness exerts a powerful pull \u2013 even on those from the city.<\/p>\n

But any visitor who crosses the Golden Horn will find a teeming metropolis of 10 million. There you will find stories that have as little to do with the Blue Mosque as most modern Londoners have with St Paul\u2019s.<\/p>\n

Part of the difficulty we have in reading Turkish writers is that Turks themselves have not been able to read them either. After the founding of the republic in 1923, the language was reformed to be written in Latin rather than Arabic script \u2013 at a stroke cutting the people off from their literary heritage.<\/p>\n

While I was in Istanbul last week, I spoke to the critic Murat Belge. \u201cAfter the end of the empire,\u201d he told me, \u201cthe republic turned inward.\u201d Greeks and Armenians, who in 1900 made up half the population of Istanbul, left a country that became more narrowly nationalistic.<\/p>\n

In later years, especially after the military coup of 1980, censorship and a crackdown on \u201cMarxist\u201d or \u201cobscene\u201d literature made life difficult for publishers. I spoke to M\u00fcge G\u00fcrsoy S\u00f6kmen, co-founder of Metis Books, who was active in radical circles at the time. \u201cIt was a very difficult time,\u201d she said. \u201c50,000 people were put in prison.\u201d Translating the wrong type of book into Turkish could land you in jail.<\/p>\n

S\u00f6kmen has also defended Elif Shafak\u2019s The Bastard of Istanbul in court. Shafak won the case but the cost of such cases can be crippling.<\/p>\n

Another publisher, Can \u00d6z, spoke to me about bringing out Paul Auster\u2019s Winter Journal last year. Auster had told H\u00fcrriyet newspaper that he didn\u2019t want to visit Turkey \u201cbecause of imprisoned journalists and writers\u201d.<\/p>\n

His comments brought an extraordinary response from the prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. He told a party meeting that Auster was \u201can ignorant man\u201d, adding: \u201cIf you come, so what? If you don\u2019t come, so what? Will Turkey lose prestige?\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite his opposition, Winter Journal sold 20,000 copies on its release in Turkey. \u00d6z also told me about a project that would have been unthinkable a few years ago: a biography of Kurdish separatist leader Abdullah \u00d6calan.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s easy, however, to get caught up in skirmishes over freedom of speech. In reality, Turkish literature has never been more free.<\/p>\n

The country is the focus nation at this month\u2019s London Book Fair. Among the 20 writers the British Council is bringing over to London is the crime writer Ahmet \u00dcmit, whose most recent novel in English, A Memento for Istanbul, is a thriller set in the days of the Byzantine Empire. One, I suspect, for fans of Pamuk\u2019s My Name is Red, a medieval murder mystery set in Ottoman-era Istanbul.<\/p>\n

Another name that might be unfamiliar to British readers is M\u00fcge Iplik\u00e7i. An experienced author of novels for both adults and children, Iplik\u00e7i\u2019s Mount Kaf will be published in English this autumn. The novel takes the reader on a dark journey into the CIA rendition programme as well as taking in the devastating earthquake of 1999.<\/p>\n

The Turkish inwardness Belge complained about is now a thing of the past. Nearly 35 per cent of books bought in Turkey are translated from foreign languages. We could learn from their example.<\/p>\n

* The Market Focus Cultural Programme at The London Book Fair is curated by the British Council. Visit www.literature.britishcouncil.org<\/p>\n

via Turkish literature to look out for – Telegraph.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Sameer Rahim Visitors to Istanbul usually stay close to the old town, where Byzantine relics vie with Ottoman splendour. They walk in the footsteps of European travel writers from Nerval to Flaubert, who were attracted by its oriental aspects: caliphs, harems and dervishes. As Orhan Pamuk writes in his enchanting memoir Istanbul, Eastern strangeness […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":69681,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2939],"tags":[3481],"class_list":["post-69680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cultureart","tag-turkish-literature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69680"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69680\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}