Snow
About the book
A poet returning from exile reaches snowbound Kars, where love becomes entangled with politics and religion.
Original title: Kar
Europe · A READING GUIDE
Turkey
Pamuk approaches Turkey through his characters’ conflicting voices, ideas and desires. In Kars, private feelings meet disputes over religion and power. Tanpınar combines an Istanbul portrait with satire on modernisation, while Sabahattin Ali focuses on a concealed love story. Yaşar Kemal moves beyond the city to a peasant’s conflict with feudal power, while Atay explores estrangement and absurd fear. British-Turkish Shafak’s English-language novels are marked as originals rather than translations.
WHERE TO START
- SnowOrhan Pamuk
- The Time Regulation InstituteAhmet Hamdi Tanpınar
- Madonna in a Fur CoatSabahattin Ali
Books to begin with
An editorial selection · not rankedNo matches. Try another language or search term.
My Name Is Red
About the book
A miniaturist’s murder in Ottoman Istanbul opens a debate about art, faith and ways of seeing.
Original title: Benim Adım Kırmızı
The Museum of Innocence
About the book
Kemal’s obsessive love for Füsun is recorded through a collection of objects and memories of Istanbul.
Original title: Masumiyet Müzesi
The Time Regulation Institute
About the book
An institute synchronising clocks becomes a satirical model of bureaucracy and imposed modernisation.
Original title: Saatleri Ayarlama Enstitüsü
A Mind at Peace
About the book
The love of Mümtaz and Nuran unfolds in Istanbul on the brink of World War II.
Original title: Huzur
Madonna in a Fur Coat
About the book
A quiet clerk’s notebook reveals his youthful love for an artist in Berlin.
Original title: Kürk Mantolu Madonna
Waiting for the Fear
About the book
Eight stories explore fear, estrangement and grotesque forms of loneliness.
Original title: Korkuyu Beklerken
The Bastard of Istanbul
About the book
Turkish and Armenian-American families’ lives intersect around memory and suppressed history.
The Forty Rules of Love
About the book
Ella’s contemporary story is set alongside the spiritual relationship between Rumi and Shams of Tabriz.
Memed, My Hawk
About the book
A young peasant becomes an outlaw after rebelling against a brutal local landlord.
Original title: İnce Memed
Istanbul: Memories and the City
About the book
Childhood and youthful memories form a personal portrait of Istanbul, its imagery, changes and melancholy.
The Time of Mute Swans
About the book
Two children in Ankara try to save a swan as Turkey approaches a military coup in the summer of 1980.
Context and sources
Sources on authors and their connections to this country. Specific edition details appear beside each book. Polish and English originals are not labelled as translations.
- Źródło: autor i tradycja literacka ↗
- Orhan Pamuk — wydanie i informacje o autorze ↗
- Orhan Pamuk — wydanie i informacje o autorze ↗
- Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar — wydanie i informacje o autorze ↗
- Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar — wydanie i informacje o autorze ↗
- Sabahattin Ali — wydanie i informacje o autorze ↗
- Oğuz Atay — wydanie i informacje o autorze ↗
- Elif Shafak — wydanie i informacje o autorze ↗
- Elif Shafak — wydanie i informacje o autorze ↗
- Yaşar Kemal — wydanie i informacje o autorze ↗
- Orhan Pamuk — Istanbul: Memories and the City ↗
- Ece Temelkuran — The Time of Mute Swans ↗
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