Review of ‘Bir Sonbahar Akşamı’ by Sait Faik Abasıyanık Edited by Raşit Çavaş Doğan Kardeş Kitaplığı/Yapı Kredi Yayınları 2009 My first encounter of Sait Faik was a TRT series way back in 2002. It was called ‘Havada Bulut’ and took place on Burgaz Adası where Sait Faik lived. Bearing in mind that my Turkish was pretty poor back then my impression was of a sad man with an altogether too-inquisitive postman, a quiet thoughtful man, an outsider in his Click for more
Words on the page…
Anyone who mentions how many thousand words they throw out before breakfast, anyone at all on the #amwriting hashtag, any completely unhelpful “10 great writers who wrote prolifically” get THE LOOK from a not-writer. The one that says – I’m trying to be cool here but the truth is I’m jealous and will now resort to making personal comments because my argument really is that weak. So why not just write? You’ve got these ideas you say, characters and Click for more
Oh Well!
A few days ago I came across a post by Chuck Wendig that summed up a quandary I’ve been in lately. When I say came across I actually mean read in my Feedly because I follow his blog. But that sounds boringly practical, so instead imagine me wandering aimlessly through the wild grasses of the internet before stumbling over the tree stump of enlightenment. The post just consisted of the flowchart below… And I was forced, as all devious flowcharts force Click for more
Focus on Turkey
Next week the London Book Fair takes place in Earls Court in London. It looks like it will be a great event with over 1600 exhibitors from 58 countries. Turkey is the Market Focus this year and will have a large presence at the fair. From cultural events, translation seminars, author interviews and much more there’s a lot going on. You can check out all the details, along with contributor information in this booklet. There’s some familiar faces here with Click for more
On The Road
Review of ‘Yolda – Seçme Öyküler’ by Yaşar Kemal Edited by Güven Turan Doğan Kardeş Kitaplığı/Yapı Kredi Yayınları 2010 I bought this book along with several others by a variety of authors from a Yapı Kredi bookstore in Izmir last October. The series has dozens of book of collected stories by well-known Turkish authors and is ideal for someone who wants to get a taste of their writing for a very reasonable price. The stories in this book are Click for more
Global Friends
A few months ago I participated in a six-week workshop called SUM-it UP run by Global Niche. I’ve known Anastasia and Tara, founders of Global Niche, for many years. We have something in common as wives who followed Turkish men home. The course itself looked deceptively simple. Six weeks of working through visions and goals, to what online platforms you want to present these on, to creating and action plan and implementing it. Easy. But somewhere along the line it Click for more
I’d like to thank…
I’ve been struggling a little lately with blogging. It’s into the New Year and yet there are no new posts, several reviews waiting to be written and an air of hesitation prevails. So it was a terrific boost when Sezin Koehler nominated me as a Very Inspiring Blogger. Sezin is a terrific wonderful amazing sister who I’ve virtually known for ages. She’s lived all around the world and is now back in the US, just about surviving life in small-town Florida. She’s Click for more
Translating a Holiday
One of the things that regularly drives me distracted is the constant mixing up of Christmas and New Years in Turkey. I’ve even mentioned it before. But my perspective is changing, a little, with time. First there’s the fact that many of the traditions associated with Christmas actually came from other festivals. The date of the 25th December was specifically chosen so the early Church could ‘compete’ with several other pagan festivals that feel at this time of year. The Click for more
Voyager in Cliché
Review of “Gizli Anların Yolcusu” by Ayşe Kulin Everest Yayinlari 2011 I groaned aloud while reading this book, I couldn’t help it. One lover snuck up behind the other, covered his eyes. The younger said “I wonder who that is. I wonder whose hands those are, let me think,” before delivering the killer line “how lovely you smell”. Wouldn’t you groan too? If I tell you this scene is between a young man from eastern Turkey, raised by a Click for more
Alphabet Soup
Before Ataturk the written language in Turkey was Ottoman. It was an ornate language, using the Arabic script, which didn’t fit the phonetics of the language, and borrowed heavily from Arabic and Persian. It did not coincide with the language spoken across Anatolia, which was reasonably similar to Turkish. The effect was to divide the people into the majority who were illiterate and a minority elite who knew how to read and write. Turkish was something looked down upon; it Click for more