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Toronto Star – February 9, 2007 -- Literature
defies politics -- Elif Shafak makes no apologies for provocative
novel sparking strong emotions in Turkey -- The Bastard of Istanbul, Elif Shafak. Viking, $24.95 (368p) ISBN
978-0-670-03834-3, 1/22/2007 -- NEW YORK-Salman Rushdie once noted that
societies which emerged from colonial rule in the '50s, '60s and
'70s became hotbeds for literary invention. "The Empire Writes
Back," he called the phenomenon, punning on George Lucas's Star Wars
film. That phrase is getting a new twist in Turkey, where according
to 35-year-old writer Elif Shafak, a new generation of Turks is
using the novel - a form that came to them from the West - to
reimagine their society from within. "Novelists have played a
very, very critical role as the engineers of social and cultural
transformation in Turkey," Shafak says...
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The Seattle Times – Friday, February 2, 2007 --
"The Bastard of Istanbul" Family secrets and Turkey's dark history
-- By Moira Macdonald -- "The Bastard of Istanbul" by Elif
Shafak Viking, 360 pp., $24.95 -- "The Bastard of Istanbul," the
second novel written in English by Turkish novelist Elif Shafak
(following "The Saint of Incipient Insanities"), has a story that
extends beyond its pages into startling real-life news. After the
book's publication in Turkey last March, Shafak was charged by a
Turkish court with "violating Turkishness" because of comments made
by several of her fictional characters about the massacre of
Armenians during World War I. It was, Shafak would later write in
The Washington Post, the first case against a work of fiction under
Turkey's Article 301; if convicted, she could have been sentenced to
up to three years in prison. Her September trial ended with a speedy
acquittal (and much media attention, with a progressive Turkish
paper asking, "Are we going to be the kind of country that
prosecutes fictional characters?") — but that it took place...
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Star Tribune – February 2, 2007 -- Ghosts of
Turkey's past -- THE BASTARD OF ISTANBUL, by: Elif Shafak,
Publisher: Viking, 360 pages, $24.95. -- It is unfortunate that the
first thing readers might know about this bold and raggedly
beautiful new novel is that writing it nearly cost Elif Shafak her
freedom. Like fellow countryman and Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk,
Shafak was charged under Article 301 of the Turkish criminal code
for "public denigration" of Turkishness, the punishment for which is
up to three years in prison. (A Turkish journalist guilty of the
same "crime" recently paid with his life.) Shafak was acquitted,
however, and now U.S. readers can pick up this still vibrating book
with newfound appreciation...
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Los Angeles Times – Sunday January 21, 2007 --
Exploring the meaning of identity, Turk and Armenian -- By Ben
Ehrenreich, Cultural collision -- The Bastard of Istanbul: A Novel,
Elif Shafak, Viking: 360 pp., $24.95 -- "Was it really better for
human beings to pine to discover more of their past?" tormented
clairvoyant Auntie Banu asks herself in "The Bastard of Istanbul" by
Elif Shafak. "Or was it simply better to know as little of the past
as possible and even to forget what small amount was remembered?"
The past is a contested landscape in Shafak's writing, and not only
there. As if eager to give a real-world illustration of the themes
the novelist explores on paper - the past's oft-invisible hold on
present affairs, memory's tricks and the fragility of identity - an
Istanbul court charged her...
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San Francisco Chronicle – Sunday January 21, 2007
-- Families’ lives, lies rooted in the Armenian genocide -- The
Bastard of Istanbul By Elif Shafak VIKING; 360 PAGES; $24.95 --
Reviewed by Saul Austerlitz -- With her sixth novel, the Turkish
writer Elif Shafak has joined the short list of authors as well
known for their purported criminal offenses as for their books. But
unlike her partners in literary crime Salman Rushdie and Orhan Pamuk,
Shafak was far from a household name in the United States when she
was charged in 2005 with “public denigration of Turkishness” for
offensive material in her novel “The Bastard of Istanbul.” Like
Pamuk, though, Shafak has run into trouble with the Turkish judicial
system over her desire to mention the unmentionable: the 1915-1923
Armenian genocide, in which 1.5 million Armenians were murdered by
the Young Turks of the Ottoman Empire. Shafak possesses the
courage...
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Pittsburg Post Gazette -- Sunday, January 14, 2007
-- Turkish author illuminates her country's past and present --
"THE BASTARD OF ISTANBUL" - By Elif Shafak - Viking ($24.95) -- By
Sherrie Flick -- At its heart, "The Bastard of Istanbul" examines
the difference between leaving and staying, or how the history of a
place changes when people choose to leave it, choose to stay or are
forced away.
Through an artfully cast, intertangled web of characters, Elif
Shafak shows how Armenians abroad remember the Armenian genocide in
what is now modern-day Turkey compared to those generations that
remained behind, how learning to be an Armenian in the United States
isn't the same as being an Armenian in Turkey where there is no
learning, and instead, simply living in the present...
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St. Louis Post Dispatch -- Sunday, Jan. 14 2007 --
Turkish novel survives a charge of 'denigrating national identity'
"THE BASTARD OF ISTANBUL" - By Elif Shafak - Viking ($24.95) --
By Patricia Corrigan -- A 35-year-old Turkish novelist, resting with
her newborn baby, learns that a court in Istanbul has acquitted her
of insulting the Turkish national identity. That's not the plot of
Elif Shafak's second novel written in English, but a real-life
consequence of the book, "The Bastard of Istanbul." The charges were
brought under Article 301 of Turkey's penal code, which carries up
to three years in jail for "denigrating Turkish national identity."
The government's case was based on comments made by characters in
the novel about the mass killings of Armenians in the final years...
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The Economist – January 11, 2007 -- Who to
believe? -- "THE BASTARD OF ISTANBUL" - By Elif Shafak - Viking
($24.95) -- ELIF SHAFAK is an award-winning novelist who was little
known outside her native Turkey before a brush with the authorities
last year over her sixth novel, “The Bastard of Istanbul”. This is a
deftly spun tale of two families—one Armenian-American and the other
Turkish—who are burdened by dark secrets and historical tragedies
rooted in a common Istanbul past. The heroine is Asya Kazanci, a
rebellious teenager born out of wedlock (hence the title) with a
passion for nihilism and Johnny Cash. She shares a crumbling Ottoman
mansion in Istanbul with her mother, three aunts, a grandmother, a
step-great-grandmother and a cat, each one endearingly eccentric and
strong-willed...
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Publishers Weekly -- November 13, 2006 -- The
Bastard of Istanbul, Elif Shafak. Viking, $24.95 (368p) ISBN
978-0-670-03834-3, 1/22/2007 -- In her second novel written in
English (The Saint of Incipient Insanities was the first), Turkish
novelist Shafak tackles Turkish national identity and the Armenian
"question" in her signature style. In a novel that overflows with a
kitchen sink's worth of zany characters, women are front and center:
Asya Kazanci, an angst-ridden 19-year-old Istanbulite is the bastard
of the title; her beautiful, rebellious mother, Zeliha (who intended
to have an abortion), has raised Asya among three generations of
complicated and colorful female relations (including religious
clairvoyant Auntie Banu and bar-brawl widow, Auntie Cevriye). The
Kazanci men either die young or...
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Kirkus Starred Review -- November 01, 2006 --
THE BASTARD OF ISTANBUL, Shafak, Elif, Viking 368 pp, $24.95,
1/22/2007 -- An astonishingly rich and lively story of an
Istanbul family whose mixed up heritage mirrors the complexity of
Turkish society. -- Shafak (The Gaze, 2006), whom the Turkish
government has put on trial for "denigrating Turkishness," writes
here about the 1915 massacre of Armenians. The four Kazanci sisters
live together with their mother and paternal grandmother in
Istanbul, their bother Mustafa having been sent to Arizona as a
young man to avoid the Kazanci curse: The men of the family tend to
die by age 41. When the youngest sister, rebellious Zeliha, has a
daughter out of wedlock, she refuses to name the father. Calling
Zeliha auntie although she knows their...
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