I am not familiar with a lot of the references in this book, which took a lot from it. The writing is very beautiful. I thought the Turkish translation felt more natural and flowed better, though I'm not sure if that's because the translator took more creative liberties or because of the cultural and lexical similarities.
One common sentiment I hear a lot is that Turks are very friendly and accommodating up until the point Armenians or Kurds are mentioned. Even if they're otherwise progressive or leftist or whatever, they'll try to avoid discussions about them. If you've wondered why that is, this book will give you an answer.
This book made quite the splash in Turkey when it was released, I assume because everyone instinctually understood what it was talking about, even though a lot of them couldn't talk about it and refused to accept it.
"No one can be so deaf as a Turk who does not want to be persuaded." as Anthony Eden had said. Evergreen.
Not at all what I expected but fuck. Full review pending
It's an accessible and cleverly written book on an overlooked topic. Every chapter is very thoughtfully done and I thought they were more cohesive compared to her first book. I'm too young to know the cultural events mentioned personally, but I feel like I understand the root of my parents' opinions on Iran a bit better now. I'm very excited for Dr. Gürel's upcoming fantasy novel and I will be recommending this book to anyone interested in middle eastern politics.
The English equivalent would be "Dersim: Journey and Topography" which is 150 EUROS. Which is a shame because a lot of Dersim's diaspora, whether they be Kurds or Armenians, can get a lot from it. Wouldn't be particularly special if resources on the history of Dersim weren't so limited.
On the whole it's a good book to get people interested in sociolinguistics but it's gonna be very boring for people who already have some knowledge besides giving a few interesting anecdotes. I like that not all languages mentioned were endangered. Also Dersim mentioned which is cool
It does a well enough job on explaining the basics of linguicide but I can't say the same for the parts on language revitalization.
What a fucking start to a whodunnit holy shit. Besides that, I like the fact that all the information you need is given so early.
Probably should be a three but the set-up and the concept of this book is basically catnip to me so I had give it a four. I've generally grown tired of east vs west themes in Turkish lit but I'm still partial to it being explored through individual relationships like this.
I found the codependent relationship between Hoja and the Venetian slave very interesting (and uncomfortable) the whole way through. I also thought the story inside a story framing common in islamic lit was used in a cute way. I liked the last chapter especially.
Cons are that It repeats itself too much at certain points without adding anything. Some specific words (like "öfkelenmek") also repeated a lot in a grating way. The descriptions of the narrator can be so vague that it would feel like Orhan Pamuk was going out of his way to give me as little info as possible. Lastly, there were a few orientalist elements present in the depiction of Hoja that felt unintentional.
Still liked it a lot though.
The first Western Armenian novel written by a woman, one of the first novels written in modern Armenian as well. It's half a soap opera and half a feminist critique. Lady Sira will be talking about ending the institution of marriage as Mayda is thinking about her handsome man. I think it would have worked better if the letter format was dropped. It doesn't make aense if you think about it even a little anyways.
It was a lot more feminist than I expected, I realized I wasn't giving the women of the time enough credit. It's never not gonna be weird to have your by far the most hateful character be a woman in a feminist story like this, but the novel approached her with a lot of sympathy and pointed out that institutionalization was bullshit. It still felt a bit dissapointing that it's immediately established that Dikran is a "women belong in the kitchen" type of anti-feminist and it didn't go anywhere. I guess I was so dissapointed because the novel was clever in its other observations.
One of her weaker works.
I really like this book. I really really like this one and also I never want to hear the word boy again.
It examines the cultural dynamics, especially the culture of love in the Ottoman Empire and Western Europe through love poems. I read it because it kept popping up in other books I've picked up. Re-read some parts in Turkish as well and the translation looked pretty good to me.
The language of the book flows really well, which is great because the topic makes it hard to get through as is.
"The Ottomans" is about the Ottomans, yes, but it's also about the perception of the Ottomans by the West. It's not a good first read to get into the history of the Ottomans as it mostly focuses on a select few important events to give an idea of what ter were like. I think it would have served this book better to focus more on the western view of the Ottomans instead of casting the net so wide. My favourite chapters were "The Fall of Constantinople", "The Lustful Turk" and "The Horrible Turk" for keeping the scope smaller. They were interesting enough to bump the rating to a four.
A very smooth reading experience! It was a lot of fun to read which I wasn't expecting. I wish there was more context given at certain points. I also thought English-Turkish relations were given a disproportionate amount of attention. I assume that's because a lot of the sources here are British. Oh well!
I already gushed about it on my site but it bears repeating, you should read it! It's got wide appeal I think. There is a bit of a genre change for the last 30% but it works well.
"A catastrophic success" sounds about right!
The history of the Turkish language reform (or "the language revolution" as it's called here) can feel absurd at times which this book represents very well. It's in depth and very fun to read, pretty funny at times. Anyone who has some interest in sociolinguistics can get a lot from reading it. Knowledge of Turkish not at all necessary.
Openly disdainful of women and the rural population. Normally, I would accept that as just the narrator's point of view but as you read, the extent of the hate makes it obvious that that's not the case. It's almost refreshing to see Kemalists who idealize Anatolia as their real homeland see what it's actually like, though. I don't remember which writer it was, but I remember someone who was born in Salonica who asked to be buried in Anatolia for this exact reason.
Of course, the novel chalks this difference up to a secularism vs islamism divide and doesn't engage with the class aspects of it at all. Not that I had any expectations of that sort for a Republic era Kemalist author.