Selcuk Altun's Turkish Lit Recommendations
To mark the English-language release of Selcuk Altun’s new novel, asked him to give a top 10 list of his favorite Turkish novels. Click the above link for all of his descriptions, but here’s the list with links to purchase English translations and a few of my comments:
1. by Feyyaz Kayacan Fergar
Not the easiest book to find, but it was translated and published in the UK in 2007.
2. by Oktay Rifat
Thank God for Anvil Press.
3. by YaÅŸar Kemal
Personally I’ve been very interested in reading this ever since NYRB reissued it a few years back.
4 YaÅŸar Kemal: On his Life and Art by YaÅŸar Kemal
Can’t find an English translation—not much of a surprise.
5. by Orhan Pamuk
6. by Orhan Pamuk
7. by Sait Faik
This book—which was published in English by Syracuse University Press and translated by Jayne Warner—sounds pretty intriguing. Compared to Chekhov, the stories range from “the realistic to the surrealistic, from the romantic to the modern, from the cynical to the compassionate.”
8. Night by Bilge Karasu
This is OP, but something I’m picking up from the library. . . . Here’s a PW review:
Karasu’s Kafka-esque political parable, first published in his native Turkey in 1984, evokes the fear and paralysis of will that grip ordinary citizens in a modern police state. His dystopia is a tyranny where squads of “nightworkers” randomly shoot or beat to death victims. The plot concerns a nameless, open-minded writer whose ex-schoolmate (known simply as “N”), now the head of a repressive state agency, orders him to attend a symposium abroad. The writer learns in advance that he is to be shot—though not killed—at the conference for propaganda purposes. Sevinc, the agent assigned to set him up, becomes his homosexual lover; another agent, Sevim, N’s former wife, develops a conscience and turns up dead on the writer’s doorstep. In postmodern footnotes, Karasu periodically interrupts the narrative to further the plot while commenting on its artifice. Winner of the Mobil Corporation’s Pegasus Prize honoring works from countries whose literature is rarely translated into English, this is a fiercely inventive novel, but the dreamlike atmosphere and setting tends to weaken its impact.
Wow.
9. by Ahmet H Tanpınar
Gifted to Obama earlier this year . .
10. by Nazım Hikmet
Another Anvil book . . .
Leave a Reply