A portrait of a Turkish Family |
Irfan Orga
Irfan Orga's Portrait of a Turkish Family (1950) is the intimate account of the unravelling of a bourgeois family living in a mansion on Istanbul's Marmara shore amidst the trauma of World War I and the Ottoman Empire's dissolution. The early chapters detail the rich procession of ceremonies - trips to the hamam, circumcisions, summering in Sarıyer at the north end of the Bosphorus - that marked the stages of early twentieth-century Ottoman life. But with the coming of the war the Orga family fortunes, like those of the country as a whole, go into freefall and Orga describes in harrowing detail the crushing poverty that besets them. For Turkey, World War I was the loss of an empire but the making of a nation. It is a story steeped in melancholy, "an autobiography of tears and goodbyes," but indispensable for a ground's eye view of life in the years surrounding Turkey's rebirth.
5 comments:
Stopping by from Thirsty Thursday Blog Hop! Feel free to stop by and say hi :-)
Heather
MisAdventuresOfAMommy.com
That sounds like a real page turner. Perfect for the coming winter months.
It IS a real page turner.. I recommend.. Thanks for stopping by!
I am looking for your GFC but can't find it.
I trying to follow you
http://showmemama.com
It is at the bottom of the blog.. Please join my NoRulesSaturday Bloghop too!
Hugs! ;)
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