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Maureen Freely

    Enlightenment
    In The Shadow Of The Yali
    Snow
    The Museum of Innocence
    Sailing Through Byzantium
    Other colours: essays and a story
    • 2023

      My Blue Peninsula is a confession that fills seven notebooks, with a final notebook left mostly empty. In them, Dora Giraud tries to explain to her adult daughters why she remains in Istanbul after escaping death at the hands of extremists, and why she risks her life to campaign for the truth about the Greek, Armenian, and Assyrian genocides, ferociously denied for a century by the Turkish state. Dora's desperate need to understand her family history is the thread that binds this story's conflicting fragments. As the direct descendant of the genocides' victims and perpetrators, she carries a tangled legacy of loss and betrayal, lies and ill-gotten gains. With this confession, she hopes to set her daughters free. But can she? My Blue Peninsula is Maureen Freely's fourth novel set in Istanbul, the city of her childhood. In each, a character from the sidelines of the preceding novel takes centre stage to probe a mystery left pending. We first met Dora Giraud in Sailing Through Byzantium as the observant daughter of a famously bohemian household who could not, then, speak the truth.

      My Blue Peninsula
    • 2021

      NAMED A MOST-ANTICIPATED BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE MILLIONS Set in a changing Istanbul, this rediscovered 1940s classic from a pioneering Turkish author tells the story of a forbidden love and its consequences. Raised by her grandmother in one of the famed yalıs, elegant yet crumbling, that line the Bosphorus, Celile occupies a unique space between the old world of the Ottoman Empire and the new world of the Republic. She drifts through ten years of marriage, reserved even with her husband, never tempted to stray from the safe path of respectability. And then one night, intoxicated by a soulful tango, she is suddenly seized with a mad passion for another man, whose reckless pursuit of her should offend but doesn’t. Torn between two men who want to possess her, Celile attempts to live a life true to herself, always keenly aware of the limits placed on her as a woman. In the Shadow of the Yalı marks the highly anticipated English-language debut of feminist writer and activist Suat Derviş. Her sensitive, strikingly modern portrayal of a love affair, with its frank emphasis on the influence of money, provides a fascinating contrast to classic tales of infidelity such as Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary.

      In The Shadow Of The Yali
    • 2013

      Sailing Through Byzantium

      • 258 pages
      • 10 hours of reading

      Set during the critical moments of the Cuban missile crisis, the narrative captures the tension and urgency as global leaders grapple with the impending threat of nuclear war. With just moments to spare, characters are faced with moral dilemmas and high-stakes decisions that could alter the course of history. The story immerses readers in the atmosphere of fear and uncertainty, highlighting the fragile nature of peace during a pivotal time in the Cold War.

      Sailing Through Byzantium
    • 2009

      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.

      The Museum of Innocence
    • 2007

      Other colours: essays and a story

      • 400 pages
      • 14 hours of reading

      From Orhan Pamuk, winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature, comes the best of twenty years work. A collection of immediate relevance and timeless value, Other Colours ranges from lyrical autobiography to criticism of literature and culture, from humour to political analysis, from delicate evocations of his friendship with his daughter Ruya to provocative discussions of Eastern and Western art. Reflections on Pamuk s first passport, his first trip to Europe, his father s death, his recent court case, and the Istanbul earthquake share space with pieces on writers as various as Laurence Sterne, Dostoyevsky, Kundera, Rushdie, and Patricia Highsmith. There are additional sections on Istanbul, New York where Pamuk lived for two years and on the writing of each of his novels. Interspersed among these are photographs, paintings, some of Pamuk s own black and white drawings, as well as Looking Out the Window , a short story originally published in Granta. My Father s Suitcase, Pamuk s 2006 Nobel Lecture, a brilliant illumination of what it means to be a writer, completes the selection from the figure who is now without doubt one of international literature s most eminent and popular figures.

      Other colours: essays and a story
    • 2007

      Enlightenment

      • 432 pages
      • 16 hours of reading
      2.7(11)Add rating

      Jeannie Wakefield needs help. Her family is being held by the US authorities. M is a journalist and at Jeannie's request she returns to Istanbul to investigate. She tries to be objective, but Jeannie's husband is also M's first love.

      Enlightenment
    • 2005

      Snow

      • 440 pages
      • 16 hours of reading
      4.0(350)Add rating

      The year is 1992. Ka, a poet and political exile, returns to Turkey as a journalist, assigned to investigate troubling reports of suicide in the small and mysterious city of Kars on the Turkish border. The snow is falling fast as he arrives, and soon all roads are closed. There's a 'suicide epidemic' amongst young religious women forbidden to wear their headscarves. Islamists are poised to win the local elections and Ka is falling in love with the beautiful and radiant Ipek, now recently divorced. Amid blanketing snowfall and universal suspicion, he finds himself pursued by terrorism in a city wasting away under the shadow of Europe. In the midst of growing religious and political violence, the stage is set for a terrible and desperate act . . . Touching, slyly comic, and humming with cerebral suspense, Snow evokes the spiritual fragility of the non-Western world, its ambivalence about the godless West, and its fury. 'A novel of profound relevance to our present moment' The Times

      Snow
    • 1996

      What About Us?

      An Open Letter to the Mothers Feminism Forgot

      • 236 pages
      • 9 hours of reading

      This work explores why feminism comes into conflict with women who have children, and why women with children suffer when they try to put feminist ideas into practice.

      What About Us?