Historical fiction books set in Turkey (17)


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1.

Snow by Orhan Pamuk EN

Rating: 5 (3 votes)
Country: Asia / Turkey flag Turkey
Description:
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Touching, slyly comic, and humming with cerebral suspense—a masterful novel of "political intrigue and philosophy, romance and noir" (Vogue) and the lethal chemistry between secular doubt and Islamic fanaticism from the Nobel Prize winner. An exiled poet named Ka returns to Turkey and travels to the forlorn city of Kars. His ostensible purpose is to report on a wave of suicides among religious girls forbidden to wear their head-scarves. But Ka is also drawn by his memories of the radiant Ipek, now recently divorced. Amid blanketing snowfall and universal suspicion, Ka fin... continue

2.

The White Castle by Orhan Pamuk EN

Rating: 4 (3 votes)
Country: Asia / Turkey flag Turkey
Description:
Winner of the 1990 Independent Award for foreign fiction, this book tells the story of a young Italian scholar who is captured by pirates. Put up for auction at the Istanbul slave market, he is bought by a Turkish servant, eager to learn about scientific and intellectual advances in the West.

3.

At the Breakfast Table by Defne Suman EN

Rating: 3 (1 vote)
Country: Asia / Turkey flag Turkey
Description:
Told from four different perspectives, At the Breakfast Table is a story of hidden histories and family secrets, from the author of The Silence of Scheherazade. Buyukada, Turkey, 2017. In the glow of a late summer morning, family gather for the 100th birthday of the famous artist Shirin Saka. It ought to be a time of fond reminiscence, looking back on a long and fruitful artistic career, on memories spanning almost a century. But the deep past is something Shirin has spent a lifetime trying to conceal. Her grandchildren, Nur and Fikret, and great-grandchild, Celine, do not know what she's hidi... continue

4.

A strangeness in my mind by Orhan Pamuk EN

Rating: 4 (4 votes)
Country: Asia / Turkey flag Turkey
Description:
At a family wedding Mevlut catches sight of a girl with whom he falls in love. After a secret courtship of letters passed via his cousin, she agrees to elope with him, and on a dark night the two come together for the first time. As they rush to catch a train to Istanbul, Mevlut realises he has been misled. But the die is cast, and the situation will determine the rest of his days. Over the next four decades in Istanbul, Mevlut works various jobs to support his loving wife and family; work that gives him a special perspective on his rapidly changing city and the people who live there. And ever... continue

5.

The Peace Machine by Oezguer Mumcu EN

0 Ratings
Country: Asia / Turkey flag Turkey
Description:
A thrilling historical adventure story from Turkey's most daring young voice We'll create a machine. A peace machine that will put an end to all wars. As the twentieth century dawns the world stands on the brink of yet another bloody war. But what if conflict were not inevitable? What if a machine could exploit the latest developments in electromagnetic science to influence people's minds? And what if such a machine could put an end to violence for ever? The search for the answer to these questions will lead our hero Celal away from his unassuming life as an Istanbul-based writer of erotic fic... continue

6.

El castillo blanco by Orhan Pamuk, Rafael tr Carpintero ES

Rating: 3 (1 vote)
Country: Asia / Turkey flag Turkey
Description:
Un joven científico italiano es capturado por piratas cuando viaja de Venecia a Nápoles. Poco después es vendido como esclavo a un sabio turco deseoso de conocer los avances científicos de Occidente. Ambientada en la Turquía del siglo XVII, El castillo blanco cuenta la extraordinaria historia de estos dos hombres, que curiosamente guardan un gran parecido físico. Una fascinante exploración de la identidad, del fatídico pulso entre tradición y modernidad, y del destino del intelectual a través de la relación que surge ... continue

7.

The Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk EN

Rating: 3 (4 votes)
Country: Asia / Turkey flag Turkey
Description:
The Museum of Innocence - set in Istanbul between 1975 and today - tells the story of Kemal, the son of one of Istanbul's richest families, and of his obsessive love for a poor and distant relation, the beautiful Fusun, who is a shop-girl in a small boutique. In his romantic pursuit of Füsun over the next eight years, Kemal compulsively amasses a collection of objects that chronicles his lovelorn progress-a museum that is both a map of a society and of his heart. The novel depicts a panoramic view of life in Istanbul as it chronicles this long, obsessive love affair; and Pamuk beautifully capt... continue

8.

Çalıkuşu by Reşat Nuri Güntekin TR

Rating: 5 (1 vote)
Country: Asia / Turkey flag Turkey
Description:
Reşat Nuri Güntekin'in 1922 yılında ilk kez Vakit gazetesinde tefrika edilen en tanınmış eseridir. Fransız Lisesi mezunu gencecik, delişmen bir kız olan Feride'nin serüveni yaşadığı derin bir hayal kırıklığı sonrasında nişanlısını, ailesini İstanbul'da bırakarak Anadolu'nun küçük bir köyüne öğretmen olmasıyla başlar. Daha sonra bu köyü diğer kasabalar, şehirler izler. Önceleri her gittiği yerde Kurtuluş Savaşı'nın etkileri görülür, güç koşulların, sefaletin izlerine rastlanır. Sonraları... continue

9.

Dokuzuncu Hariciye Koğuşu by Peyami Safa TR

Rating: 5 (1 vote)
Country: Asia / Turkey flag Turkey
Description:
Peyami Safa'nın şaheserlerinden Dokuzuncu Hariciye Koğuşu, Türk edebiyatında "insan ruhunun derinliklerinde ve labirentlerinde dolaşan ilk roman" olması ve hasta bir insanı ve onun psikolojisini ele alması bakımından önemli bir yere sahiptir. Birçok araştırmacı ve yazar tarafından Türk edebiyatında bir ilk kabul edilen Dokuzuncu Hariciye Koğuşu, Tanpınar'ın dediği gibi, "acının ve ıstırabın yegâne kitabı" olarak hem kemiyet hem de keyfiyet bakımından başka hiçbir eser olmasa da Türk romanının var olduğuna delil gösteril... continue

10.

Nights of Plague : A novel by Orhan Pamuk EN

Rating: 3 (1 vote)
Country: Asia / Turkey flag Turkey
Description:
From the the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature: Part detective story, part historical epic—a bold and brilliant novel that imagines a plague ravaging a fictional island in the Ottoman Empire. It is April 1900, in the Levant, on the imaginary island of Mingheria—the twenty-ninth state of the Ottoman Empire—located in the eastern Mediterranean between Crete and Cyprus. Half the population is Muslim, the other half are Orthodox Greeks, and tension is high between the two. When a plague arrives—brought either by Muslim pilgrims returning from the Mecca or by merchant vessels coming from Alex... continue

11.

Memed, My Hawk by Yaşar Kemal EN

Rating: 5 (2 votes)
Country: Asia / Turkey flag Turkey
Description:
Memed grows up a serf to a vicious overlord on the thistle-clad plains of Turkey’s Taurus region. When his plan to escape is dashed, and the young woman he loves murdered, Memed makes for the mountains to become an outlaw. Before long he has transformed from a young rebel to an infamous bandit, the scourge of corrupt oppressors and hero to the poor. With vividness and simplicity, Kemal's classic novel evokes the fierce beauty of his country and the struggles of its oppressed people.

12.

De la part de la princesse morte by Kénizé Mourad FR

0 Ratings
Country: Asia / Turkey flag Turkey
Description:
Istamboul, 1911. L'Empire ottoman, ce colosse aux pieds d'argile, n'a plus que quelques années à vivre lorsque naît la princesse Selma, petite-fille de sultan. Elle ne connaîtra que brièvement les fastes du palais, les intrigues de harem : bientôt jetée sur les routes de l'exil, Selma vivra d'autres débâcles, d'autres Empires - qu'elle soit reine ou esclave, libre ou amoureuse, des Indes impériales à Paris sous la menace allemande... C'est sa fille, Kenizé, qui retrace aujourd'hui son exceptionnel destin, tel des mémoires interrompues, "de la part de la princesse morte...".


14.

10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World by Elif Shafak EN

0 Ratings
Country: Asia / Turkey flag Turkey
Description:
'In the first minute following her death, Tequila Leila's consciousness began to ebb, slowly and steadily, like a tide receding from the shore. Her brain cells, having run out of blood, were now completely deprived of oxygen. But they did not shut down. Not right away . . . ' Our brains stay active for ten minutes after our heart stops beating. For Tequila Leila, each minute brings with it a new memory- growing up with her father and his two wives in a grand old house in a quiet Turkish town; watching the women gossip and wax their legs while the men went to mosque; sneaking cigarettes and Wes... continue

15.

The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak EN

Rating: 5 (1 vote)
Country: Asia / Turkey flag Turkey
Description:
Two teenagers, a Greek Cypriot and a Turkish Cypriot, meet at a taverna on the island they both call home. The taverna is the only place that Kostas and Defne can meet in secret, hidden beneath the blackened beams from which hang garlands of garlic and chilli peppers, creeping honeysuckle, and in the centre, growing through a cavity in the roof, a fig tree. The fig tree witnesses their hushed, happy meetings; their silent, surreptitious departures. The fig tree is there, too, when war breaks out, when the capital is reduced to ashes and rubble, when the teenagers vanish. Decades later, Kostas ... continue

16.

The Silence of Scheherazade by Defne Suman EN

0 Ratings
Country: Asia / Turkey flag Turkey
Description:
On an orange-tinted evening in September 1905, Scheherazade is born to an opium-dazed mother in the ancient city of Smyrna. At the very same moment, a dashing Indian spy arrives in the harbour with a secret mission from the British Empire. He sails in to golden-hued spires and minarets, scents of fig and sycamore, and the cries of street hawkers selling their wares. When he leaves, seventeen years later, it will be to the heavy smell of kerosene and smoke as the city, and its people, are engulfed in flames. But let us not rush, for much will happen between then and now. Birth, death, romance a... continue

17.

Zăpada by Orhan Pamuk RO

0 Ratings
Country: Asia / Turkey flag Turkey
Description:
Aparut in 2002, Zapada, romanul cu aer kafkian al lui Orhan Pamuk pare familiar cititorului pasionat. Zapada urmareste un moment din viata unui poet ce revine in inima framintata de umori si conflicte religioase a unui orasel turcesc de provincie. In Kars, totul a luat-o razna, iar locuitorii orasului sint ingroziti de valul de sinucideri ale unor tinere carora li s-a interzis sa poarte val in scoli. Ka revede fosti prieteni si isi reintilneste iubita, Ipek, a carei sora mai tinara este conducatoarea protestatarelor. Odata ce numarul personajelor creste, framintarile in micul oras capata propo... continue