WHAT CAN I READ BEFORE I GO TO TURKEY ?
SOME SUGGESTED BOOKS :
YOU MAY ENJOY TO READ BEFORE YOU VISIT TURKEY
Ataturk: The Rebirth of a Nation
by Patrick Kinross (Lord Kinross)
The definitive biography of the father of modern Turkey, a powerful figure in the still-unfolding drama of the Middle East.
With the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after the First World War came the emergence of new nations, chief among them Turkey itself. It was the creation of one man, the soldier-statesman Mustafa Kemal, who dragged his country from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century, and in defeating Western imperialists inspired ‘the cause of the East’. Lord Kinross writes of the intrigues of empires, the brutalities of civil war, personal courage – showing us Ataturk, the incarnation of glory – as well as of Kemal’s youthful ambition, and his problems with his wife.
Patrick Kinross was a Scotish historian and writer noted for his biography of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and other works on history. He was also a journalist and writer. During the Second World War he served with the Royal Air Force and from 1944-47 was First Secretary at the British Embassy at Cairo.
Memed, My Hawk
by Yashar Kemal
This book which has been translated into more than forty languages is considered Kemal’s masterpiece.
Yaşar Kemal is a leading name not only of Turkish literature, but of world literature as well. Yaşar Kemal received many awards in Turkey and more than twenty international awards in the world. He was Turkey’s first Nobel Prize for literature nominee and his work has been published in numerous languages.
My Name is Red
by Orhan Pamuk
Amazing novel from the Nobel prize winner Orhan Pamuk. Especially if you are interested in Istanbul during the 16th century.
If you are intereted in today’s Istanbul, you may also enjoy his Nobel prize winner book “Istanbul: Memories and the city”. In 2006 he won Nobel Prize for Literature, becoming the second youngest person to receive the award in its history.
Orhan Pamuk‘s books have been translated into 61 languages, including Georgian, Malayan, Czech, Danish, Japanese, Catalan, as well as English, German and French.
Apart from three years in New York, Orhan Pamuk has spent all his life in the same streets and district of Istanbul, and he now lives in the building where he was raised. Pamuk has been writing novels for 30 years and never done any other job except writing.
Fourty Rules of Love
by Elif Shafak
Imaginative novel about the famous Sufi mystic Rumi, Shafak effortlessly blends East and West, past and present, to create a dramatic, compelling, and exuberant tale about how love works in the world. Shafak unfolds two parallel narratives-one set in the thirteenth century, when Rumi encountered his spiritual mentor, the wandering dervish known as Shams of Tabriz, and one contemporary, as an unhappy American housewife, inspired by Rumi’s message of love, finds the courage to transform her life.
Elif Shafak is an award-winning novelist and the most widely read woman writer in Turkey. Critics have named her as “one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary Turkish and world literature”. Her books have been published in more than 40 countries and she was awarded the honorary distinction of Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters.
Birds Without Wings
by Louis de Bèrnieres
Louis de Bernières creates a world, populates it with characters as real as our best friends, and launches it into the maelstrom of twentieth-century history. The setting is a small village in southwestern Anatolia in the waning years of the Ottoman Empire. Everyone there speaks Turkish, though they write it in Greek letters. It’s a place that has room for a professional blasphemer; where a brokenhearted aga finds solace in the arms of a Circassian courtesan who isn’t Circassian at all; where a beautiful Christian girl named Philothei is engaged to a Muslim boy named Ibrahim. But all of this will change when Turkey enters the modern world.
Louis de Bernières, who lives in Norfolk, published his first novel in 1990 and was selected by Granta magazine as one of the twenty Best of Young British Novelists in 1993. Since then he has become well known internationally as a writer, with Captain Corelli’s Mandolin winning the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Novel in 1994.
Biblical Turkey
by Mark Wilson
Biblical Turkey is an authoritative and comprehensive guide to the ancient Jewish and Christian sites in Turkey. It includes all the references to cities, regions, provinces, and natural features in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Apocrypha/Deuterocanonicals, New Testament, and Apostolic Fathers. Special features include Sidetrips, which point to nearby sites that are also of interest to visitors.
Mark Wilson is Adjunct Professor of Early Christianity, Founder and Director of Asia Minor Research Center. He is currently working on ancient sites in Turkey.
Last Train to Istanbul
by Ayse Kulin
This is a story of adventure and intrigue from one of Turkey’s bestselling modern authors. As the Nazi invasion of France threatens the love between the daughter of one of Turkey’s last Ottoman pashas and her Jewish husband, they refuse to let war, politics or religion destroy their bond. Instead, with the help of some brave Turkish diplomats they, and many other potential Nazi victims, begin a perilous journey across a war-torn continent to the safe harbor of Istanbul. This is fiction, but Turkey welcomed many Jewish refugees during World War II whose descendants still live in the country today.
Ayse Kulin is one of Turkey’s most beloved authors, with more than ten million copies of her books sold. Kulin is known for captivating stories about human endurance. In addition to penning internationally bestselling novels, she has also worked as a producer, cinematographer, and screenwriter for numerous television shows and films. Her novel Last Train to Istanbul won the European Council Jewish Community Best Novel Award and has been translated into twenty-three languages.
Turkey, A Short History
by Norman Stone
This is an insightful introduction to how Turkey has interacted with the world from the 11th century to the present day and become the leading democracy in the modern Muslim world. It features narratives on Turkey’s greatest leaders including the glorious Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent and the beloved reformer and father of secular Turkey, Kemal Ataturk.
Norman Stone is a British historian currently Professor in the department of International Relations at Bilkent University in Turkey. He is a former Professor at University of Oxford, lecturer at University of Cambridge and he was adviser of former Prime Minister of UK Margaret Thatcher. Stone’s best known book is The Eastern Front 1914-1917 (1975) for which he was awarded the Wolfson History Prize.
Unleashed, Contemporary Art in Turkey
by Hossein Amirsadeghi and Maryam Homayoun-Eisler
Turkey, the bridge between continents, has witnessed many golden ages of art throughout the centuries, and today it is once again home to an extraordinarily vibrant contemporary art scene. Internationally recognized artists such as Kutluğ Ataman are relentlessly pushing boundaries while others such as Gülsün Karamustafa, Hale Tenger, Taner Ceylan, İrfan Önürmen, Banu Cennetoğlu, Ahmet Öğüt, Canan Tolon, Ömer Ali Kazma, Haluk Akakçe and Ramazan Bayrakoğlu are producing works of breathtaking beauty and great conceptual depth. Yet these represent only the tip of the iceberg.
Hossein Amirsadeghi is a writer, publisher, editor and documentary filmmaker.
Maryam Homayoun Eisler holds a BA from Wellesley College and an MBA from Columbia University. Currently co-chair of the Tate Middle East North Africa Acquisition Committee.
Forty Camel Girl, Letters from Turkey
by E. Grace Beyler
It’s 1969. The headline news lurches from hippy demonstrations for ‘peace and love’ to war stories from Vietnam. On the edge of Europe, Turkey is fighting to emerge from its Ottoman legacy. As global turmoil seeps into the country, Hakan and his American fiancée, Grace, travel from London to his provincial hometown so that he can do his required military service. Unprepared for the traumas that await them, they walk into a family struggling with bankruptcy, smuggling charges, emotional instability and alcoholism.
Determined to pursue their life together, whatever the obstacles, Hakan and Grace begin to wonder if events will conspire to defeat them. While Hakan tries to hold together his family in Turkey and his business in London, Grace, the uninvited outsider, makes a personal journey through a culture embedded deeply in the past.
This is her dramatic, touching and funny true story.
Tales from the Expat Harem: Foreign Women in Modern Turkey
by Anastasia M. Ashman
This book is a nonfiction anthology by 32 expatriate women about their lives in modern Turkey. This illuminating anthology provides a window into the country from the perspective of thirty-two expatriates from seven different nations—artists, entrepreneurs, Peace Corps volunteers, archaeologists, missionaries, and others…
Anastasia M. Ashman is an American author from California. She is cultural producer, a digital strategist and cofounder of global personal branding. Ashman is a cultural essayist, editor and cultural producer. Her arts, travel and culture journalism and criticism has appeared in a wide range of publications, from international business newspapers and newsmagazines.
Christian Origins in Ephesus & Asia Minor
by Mark R. Fairchild
Istanbul Was a Fairy Tale
by Mario Levi
A major work of contemporary Turkish literature, Istanbul Was a Fairy Tale tells the stories of three generations of a Jewish family from the 1920s to the 1980s. Istanbul is their only home, and yet they live in a state of alienation, isolating themselves from the world around them. As witness, observer, and protagonist, the narrator at once inside and outside of his story records their many tales, as well as those of their friends and neighbors, creating an expansive mosaic of characters, each doing their best to survive the twentieth century.
Mario Levi is a Turkish writer from Istanbul. His first published book was “Jacques Brel: A Lonely Man” (1986). His first book of short stories, “Not Being Able to Go to a City” was published in 1990. These autobiographical stories are an account of the writer with both his loves, his childhood and preteen years. Mario Levi, in addition to being a writer, has also been a French teacher, an importer, a journalist, a radio programmer and a copywriter. He is still giving lectures at Yeditepe University.
Turquoise: A Chef’s Travels in Turkey
by Greg Malouf & Lucy Malouf
With terrain from rugged mountains to idyllic coastline, Turkey has become a sought-after travel destination, enjoyed not only for its beauty, but its culinary wonders. In Turquoise, Greg and Lucy Malouf visit spice markets and soup kitchens, enjoy fish sandwiches on the Bosphorus, and drink in ancient teahouses. The recipes inspired by their travels capture the enticing flavors that define Turkish cuisine from the ancient ruins of Pergamum to modern day Istanbul. Some are traditional favorites, such as Little Kefta Dumplings in Minted Yogurt Sauce, while many morefrom Roast Chicken with Pine Nut and Barberry Pilav Stuffing to Pistachio Halva Ice Creamare Greg’s own, flavored with his years ofexperience cooking Middle Eastern food. With its hundreds of luscious photographs, Turquoise is a chance to share in this unforgettable Turkish journey.
Michelin-starred chef Greg Malouf completed his training in France, Italy, Austria and Hong Kong before returning to Melbourne where between 2001 and 2012, he was Executive Chef of MoMo restaurant in Melbourne.
Together with former husband, the modern Middle Eastern masterchef, Greg Malouf, Lucy is the co-creator of New Feast: Modern Middle Eastern Vegetarian (2014); Malouf: New Middle Eastern Food (2011), Saraban (2010), Turquoise (2007), Saha (2005), Moorish (2003) and Arabesque (1999). The Malouf’s multi-award-winning books have been translated into several languages and are now published around the world.
Ataturk: The Biography of the founder of Modern Turkey
by Andrew Mango
In this major new biography of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, and the first to appear in English based on Turkish sources, Andrew Mango strips away the myth, to show the complexities of one of the most visionary, influential, and enigmatic statesmen of the century. Andrew Mango’s revealing portrait of Atatürk throws light on matters of great importance today-resurgent nationalism, religious fundamentalism, and the reality of democracy. Mango spent five years working on the biography of Ataturk using Turkish printed sources though not archival material. It has been claimed that his biography of Kemal Atatürk constitutes the definitive account among many other works and “reveals the long suppressed darker aspects of its subject, showing us a far more complex personality than we had seen before.”
Andrew Mango was a British author who was born in Turkey as one of three sons of a prosperous Anglo-Russian family. He was the brother of the distinguished Oxford historian and Byzantinist Professor Cyril Mango.
Crescent and Star : Turkey between two worlds
by Stephen Kinzer
In the first edition of this widely praised book, Stephen Kinzer made the convincing claim that Turkey was the country to watch―poised between Europe and Asia, between the glories of its Ottoman past and its hopes for a democratic future, between the dominance of its army and the needs of its civilian citizens, between its secular expectations and its Muslim traditions. In this newly revised edition, he adds much important new information on the many exciting transformations in Turkey’s government and politics that have kept it in the headlines, and also shows how recent developments in both American and European policies have affected this unique and perplexing nation.
Stephen Kinzer is a former New York Times foreign correspondent and the author of Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq and The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War. He teaches at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University.
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Notice: These are just few suggestions. Please send me an e-mail if you need any further information. cenk@tutkutours.com
Enjoy !