The Bastard Istanbul

[Tea Rochlitz]

ROBERTSIEGEL, host: Last year, a Turkish court charged novelist Elif Shafak with denigrating Turkishness. The reason, a remark about the Armenian genocide made by one of the characters in her novel "The Bastard of Istanbul." Eventually, the charges were dropped. Now, the novel is about to come out in an English language version written by the author herself. Here's our reviewer Alan Cheuse. ALAN CHEUSE: The story straddles two worlds, that of modern Istanbul and contemporary America, and two families and two visions of history and reality. In Istanbul, we meet the Kazanci clan. This family is made up almost completely of women, including a bunch of sisters, a grandmother, Asya, the bastard of the book's title, who's the illegitimate child of one of the sisters, and an unnamed and until almost the novel's end unknown father. In Tucson resides the beautiful Armanoush, otherwise known as Aimee, and her American mother whose current husband is a Turkish engineer who happens to be the last surviving male of the Kazanci clan. Aimee's father is an Armenian man whose family escaped the Turkish genocide against the country's Armenian Christian citizens and now lives in San Francisco. It's Aimee's father who in a conversation refers to that national violence whose mention recently got this book called into a Turkish court. But it is as much family history as national history that drives this vital and entertaining novel with powerful and idiosyncratic characters and vibrant language that drives the characters. The book overflows with hilarity and anger, with anguish and redemption. Food and food and more food gets heaped up on the Kazanci table, as does love and hope and despair and dreams and life, as well. One of the sisters finds her truth in Tarot cards and communicates with a couple of genies who live on her shoulders, while another, runs a successful tattoo parlor. And, Asya, the bastard, finds affection amidst the group of westernize intellectuals at an Istanbul caf called the Kondura(ph). And for young and beautiful and questing Aimee, she finds herself addicted to novels. Novels were dangerous we hear. Before you knew it, you could be so carried away that you could lose touch with reality. That's what happened to me as soon as I began reading this deep and delightful novel. It carried me away, and reality was a little different when I returned. SIEGEL: The book is "The Bastard of Istanbul" by Elif Shafak. Our reviewer, Alan Cheuse, teaches writing at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia.

A moving novel on the power of friendship in our darkest times, from internationally renowned writer and speaker Elif Shafak. In the pulsating moments after she has been murdered and left in a dumpster outside Istanbul, Tequila Leila enters a state of heightened awareness. Her heart has stopped beating, but her brain is still active - for 10 minutes 38 seconds. While the Turkish sun rises and her friends sleep soundly nearby, she remembers her life - and the lives of others, outcasts like her.

Two teenagers, a Greek Cypriot and a Turkish Cypriot, meet at a taverna on the island they both call home. In the taverna, hidden beneath garlands of garlic, chili peppers and creeping honeysuckle, Kostas and Defne grow in their forbidden love for each other. A fig tree stretches through a cavity in the roof, and this tree bears witness to their hushed, happy meetings and eventually, to their silent, surreptitious departures. The tree is there when war breaks out, when the capital is reduced to ashes and rubble, and when the teenagers vanish.

Birds Without Wings is the story of a small town in Anatolia in the dying days of the Ottoman Empire told in the richly varied voices of the men and women (Armenians, Christians, and Muslims) whose lives are intertwined and rooted there: Iskander, the potter and local fount of wisdom; Philotei, the Christian girl of legendary beauty, courted almost from infancy by Ibrahim the goatherd, a great love that culminates in tragedy and madness; and many more.

A New York Times Top 10 Book of the Year and National Book Award finalist, Pachinko is an "extraordinary epic" of four generations of a poor Korean immigrant family as they fight to control their destiny in 20th-century Japan (San Francisco Chronicle). In the early 1900s, teenaged Sunja, the adored daughter of a crippled fisherman, falls for a wealthy stranger at the seashore near her home in Korea. He promises her the world, but when she discovers she is pregnant - and that her lover is married - she refuses to be bought.

Paris, July 1942: Sarah, a ten year-old girl, is brutally arrested with her family by the French police in the Vel' d'Hiv' roundup, but not before she locks her younger brother in a cupboard in the family's apartment, thinking that she will be back within a few hours. Paris, May 2002: On Vel' d'Hiv's 60th anniversary, journalist Julia Jarmond is asked to write an article about this black day in France's past.

Three generations of Palestinian-American women living in Brooklyn are torn between individual desire and the strict mores of Arab culture in this powerful debut - a heart-wrenching story of love, intrigue, courage, and betrayal that will resonate with women from all backgrounds, giving voice to the silenced and agency to the oppressed.

At its center is the "bastard" of the title, Asya, a 19-year-old woman who loves Johnny Cash and the French Existentialists, and the four sisters of the Kazanci family, who all live together in an extended household in Istanbul. They include Zehila, the zestful, headstrong youngest sister, who runs a tattoo parlor and is Asya's mother; Banu, who has newly discovered herself as a clairvoyant; Cevriye, a widowed high-school teacher; and Feride, a hypochondriac obsessed with impending disaster. Their one (estranged) brother lives in Arizona with his wife and her Armenian daughter, Armanoush. When Armanoush secretly flies to Istanbul in search of her identity, she finds the Kazanci sisters and becomes fast friends with Asya. A secret is uncovered that links the two families and ties them to the 1915 Armenian deportations and massacres.

Abeo Kata lives a comfortable, happy life in West Africa as the privileged nine-year-old daughter of a government employee and stay-at-home mother. But when the Katas' idyllic lifestyle takes a turn for the worse, Abeo's father, following his mother's advice, places the girl in a religious shrine, hoping that the sacrifice of his daughter will serve as atonement for the crimes of his ancestors. Unspeakable acts befall Abeo for the 15 years she is held in the shrine. When she is finally rescued, broken and battered, she must struggle to overcome her past.

Shafak has created an intricately woven tale about the very different but equally difficult struggles of living with the past and trying to survive without one. Full of bold, unforgettable characters, The Bastard of Istanbul reveals that even the worst events are important ingredients in the recipes that make each of us who we are.

A. I was born in France, Strasbourg, in 1971. All throughout my childhood and youth I have lived in different cities and countries, including Madrid, Spain; Amman, Jordan; and Cologne, Germany. Then in my thirties I came to the United States, first to Boston, then Michigan and Arizona. I am not an immigrant. I guess all my life I have been a nomad, a commuter.

Q. Your novel gives readers insight into both the Turkish and Armenian cultures and some of their respective problems. What personal experiences led you to portray these two peoples in the way that you have?

A. I am the child of a Turkish diplomat. I was raised by a single mother, and she became a diplomat around the time I was ten or eleven. And when we were in Madrid, Spain, Armenian terrorists were killing Turkish diplomats. My first acquaintance with Armenian identity is very negative. There is no way terrorism can be legitimized or approved. But that said, in time as I kept reading, thinking, and collecting stories of real people, as a writer and intellectual my pursuits brought me to a point where I had to face the tragic events of 1915 and rethink the whole past.

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