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Picture of a book: Puslu Kıtalar Atlası
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Picture of a book: the four agreements by don miguel ruiz (book summary)

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Picture of a book: Motherland Hotel
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Motherland Hotel

Shaun Fleming, Yusuf Atılgan
"My heroes are Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar, Oguz Atay, and Yusuf Atilgan. I have become a novelist by following their footsteps . . . I love Yusuf Atilgan; he manages to remain local although he benefits from Faulkner's works and the Western traditions."--Orhan Pamuk"Motherland Hotel is a startling masterpiece, a perfect existential nightmare, the portrait of a soul lost on the threshold of an ever-postponed Eden."--Alberto Manguel"This moving and unsettling portrait of obsession run amok might have been written in 1970s Turkey, when social mores after Ataturk were still evolving, but it stays as relevant as the country struggles to save the very democratic ideals on which the Republic was rebirthed. . . . brilliant writing . . . "--Poornima Apte, Booklist, Starred Review"Turkish writer Atilgan's classic 1973 novel about alienation, obsession, and precipitous decline, nimbly translated by Stark. . . . An unsettling study of a mind, steeped in violence, dropping off the edge of reason."--Kirkus Reviews"A maladroit loner who runs the seen-better-days Motherland Hotel in a backwater Turkish town, Zeberjet has become obsessed with a female guest who stayed there briefly and frantically anticipates her presumed return. . . . as Zeberjet becomes increasingly unhinged, we're drawn into his dark interior life while coming to understand Turkey's post-Ottoman uncertainty. Sophisticated readers will understand why Atilgan is called the father of Turkish modernism, while those who enjoy dark psychological novels can also appreciate."--Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal"Yusuf Atilgan gives us a wonderful, timeless novel about obsession, with an anti-hero who is both victim and perpetrator, living out a life 'neither dead nor alive' in a sleepy Aegean city. Motherland Hotel is an absolute gem of Turkish literature."--Esmahan Aykol, author of Divorce Turkish Style"Yusuf Atilgan, like Patrick Modiano, demonstrates how the everyday can reflect larger passions and catastrophes. Beautifully written and translated, Motherland Hotel can finally find the wider audience in the west that it deserves."--Susan Daitch, author of The Lost Civilization of Suolucidir"The freedom that Atilgan articulates isn t the freedom of Lord Byron or Milton Friedman. It s more like the sense of freedom that comes with finally having a diagnoses. It s the freedom that comes from understanding that you re imprisoned in other people s ideas of freedom. But there s a consolation and a quiet wisdom that comes from understanding that these definitions will pass in turn, like guests checking out of a hotel."--Scott Beauchamp, Full StopZeberjet, the last surviving member of a once prosperous Ottoman family, is the owner of the Motherland Hotel, a run-down establishment a rundown establishment near the railroad station. A lonely, middle-aged introvert, his simple life is structured by daily administrative tasks and regular, routine sex with the hotel's maid. One day, a beautiful woman from the capital comes to spend the night, promising to return "next week," and suddenly Zeberjet's insular, mechanical existence is dramatically and irrevocably changed. The mysterious woman's presence has tantalized him, and he begins to live his days in fevered anticipation of her return. But the week passes, and then another, and as his fantasies become more and more obsessive, Zeberjet gradually loses his grip on reality.Motherland Hotel was hailed as the novel of the year when it was published in 1973, astonishing critics with its experimental style, its intense psychological depth and its audacious description of sexual obsession. Zeberjet was compared to such memorable characters as Quentin Compson in Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury and Meursault in Albert Camus' The Stranger. While author Yusuf Atilgan had already achieved considerable literary fame, Motherland Hotel cemented his reputation as one of Turkey's premier modernists."
Picture of a book: Bunu Herkes Bilir: Tarihteki Yanlış Sorulara Doğru Cevaplar
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Bunu Herkes Bilir: Tarihteki Yanlış Sorulara Doğru Cevaplar

Shaun Fleming
BİLGİ, MİZAH VE ZEKÂ TARİHLE BİRLEŞİYOR.Elinizdeki kitap size tarihin şifrelerini, El Dorado’nun yerini, Karındeşen Jack’in kim olduğunu ya da simya taşının hikmetini öğretmeyecek. Karşınıza pavyonlarda sürten altıncı Dalai Lama, genç kalmak için altın içen Diane de Poitiers, teslim ol çağrısına orta parmaklarını işaret ve yüzük parmaklarının arasına sokup sallamak suretiyle cevap veren Venedik garnizonu, erkek kılığına girip tüm Siena’yı elden geçiren çapkın travesti Caterina Vizzani, bir köşede hacetini gideren Evliya’nın üstüne düşüp onu “boklu gazi” yapan düşman da çıkmayacak.Bu, kahramanlarla hainlerin, tarihin akışını değiştiren vizyonerlerle fırsatları tepen basiretsiz liderlerin kitabı değil. Küçük Buzul Çağı, Fiyat ve Sanayi devrimleri, Aydınlanma, Atlantik Üçgeni, Büyük Kırılma, Hümanizma, muhayyel cemaatler, Protestan Etiği gibi birçok kavramın havada uçuştuğu sayfalarımızda kopuşları değil, devamlılıkları göreceksiniz. Tarihi bir anda değiştiren olayların aslında semptomlarını kaplumbağa hızıyla gösteren süreçlerin birer sonucu olduğunu fark edeceksiniz.Herkesin hafife aldığı şu grotesk tarih kortejinin birbirinden ilginç kahramanlarının yaratacağı hafif bir tebessümden ve sıra dışı anekdotların verdiği şaşkınlıktan daha fazlasını hedefliyoruz: Okuyucunun geçmişini ve bugününü daha iyi kavrayıp geleceğini daha iyi planlamasını sağlamak ve ona entelektüel bir derinlik kazandırarak daha kaliteli bir yaşam sürmesine yardımcı olmak.Emrah Safa Gürkan’ın mizahla zekâyı buluşturduğu Bunu Herkes Bilir, hangi yaşta olursa olsun kendini geliştirmek için öğrenmeye zaman ayıranların zevkle okuyacağı bir başucu eseri…
Picture of a book: The Disconnected
books

The Disconnected

Oğuz Atay
Olric Press is pleased to announce for its first publication a major work in the canon of world literature. The Disconnected was the first book of Oguz Atay (1934-1977), and was before its time. First published in 1972 it was a cult book among younger writers, but he never saw a second printing before his premature death. Since it was reprinted in 1984 it has gone through more than 70 editions, and is widely reckoned to be the most important book in modern Turkish literature.“My life was a game, but I wanted it to be taken seriously,” says Selim, the anti-hero of the novel. But the game has a terrible end with his suicide, and his friend Turgut’s quest to understand this is the story of the book. He meets friends whom Selim had kept separate from each other, he finds documents in a kaleidoscopic variety of styles, sometimes hugely funny, sometimes very moving, as Selim rails against the ugliness of his world whether in satire or in a howl of anguish, taking refuge in words and loneliness. Under layers of fantasy is the central concept of the Disconnected, tutunamayanlar, literally ‘those who cannot hold on’, poor souls among whom he counts himself, whose sole virtue is that they do not fit into society as it is constituted. He will be their messiah, at whose second coming they will change places with the comfortable of the world. Confronted with this Turgut sees the faultline in his conventional middle class life, and that he too is one of the Disconnected: he takes a train into Anatolia and ‘vanishes’.What could have been a bleak vision of alienation is transformed by the power of language and the imagination.In 2002 UNESCO put The Disconnected at the head of their list of Turkish books of which translation was essential, warning that it would be very difficult. A German translation in 2016 was well received (e.g., Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 26 June, found it astonishing that this masterpiece should wait 45 years to appear in German), and needed three printings in six months. But English was the language Atay knew and loved, and his confrontation with literature in English, notably Hamlet and the King James version of the gospels, is a feature of the book. An English translation is therefore called for, and by good chance one exists. Sevin Seydi (the dedicatee of the original) made a rough translation page by page as Atay was actually writing, as a sort of game, and discussed it with him. After 40 years living, studying, working, marrying in England she has thoroughly revised it, and it should be the definitive version. It is not certain that it would match the commercial success it has had elsewhere, hence this small edition of only 200 copies. Since it is a special edition the paper and binding are of archival quality not often found nowadays in mass-market books.