A Book and Literary Travel Blog
I have prepared the list of 15 books translated from various languages that can help you diversify your reading experience. I hope this list will be of use. 1 FRENCH: I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman I Who Have Never Known Men is a dystopian novel written […]
Autumn is my favourite time of the year. As we are slowly about to say goodbye to summer and welcome Autumnal Equinox in the Northern hemisphere on 23 September, I put together a list of few books with autumn vibes, a beautiful veil of melancholy and nostalgia. In my view […]
‘Where do you start someone’s story when every life has more than one thread and what we call birth is not the only beginning, nor is death exactly an end?’ ‘People on both sides of the island [Cyprus] suffered – and people on both sides would hate it if you […]
‘The Architect’s Apprentice’ by a Turkish writer, Elif Shafak Through a young apprentice, the Indian boy called Jahan, we travel to the 16th century Istanbul during the times of the Ottoman Empire under the reign of three sultans: Suleyman, Salim and Murad. We meet many historical figures including Mimar Sinan, […]
Three Daughters of Eve by Elif Shafak tackles many different topics including religion, or rather the meaning of God in one’s life, how cultural and political circumstances shape lives of the individuals and the position of women in Eastern and Western societies. The story does provide an insight into Turkey’s […]
“The possibility of an immediate and wholesale decimation of civilization was not half as frightening as the simple realization that our individual passing had no impact on the order of things, and life would go on just the same with or without us.” “We must do what we can to […]
“The path of fiction could easily misled you into the cosmos of stories where everything was fluid, quixotic, and as open to surprises as a moonless night in the desert” Shafak, E., The Bastard of Istanbul, Penguin Random House UK, 2015, pp. 96 – 97
