A brief but intensely emotional, memorable story that spans centuries and continents.
A somber, pensive novel, by one of Turkey’s greatest modern writers, that centers on current and ancient troubles at a historic crossroads.
Ibrahim, a young journalist in Istanbul who works for a paper that thrives on mayhem, picks up on a disturbing item in a news-budget meeting: A Turkish pizza cook has been murdered by neo-Nazis in Germany, and his circumstances are familiar. “If this person’s name was Hussein Yılmaz, and if he’d been born in Mardin and was thirty-two years old, it couldn’t be anyone other than my childhood friend Hussein,” Ibrahim realizes. Soon he’s off to his hometown, an oasis in the red-dust desert near the Syrian border where everything has changed in the years since he’s been gone. Hussein, he learns, has been effectively killed twice. First, an IS sympathizer shot him, crying “that this was what happens when you betray Allah for Satan,” and left Hussein for dead. Hussein’s crime? To fall in love with a Yezidi refugee woman with a blind baby, a member of a tribe rumored to worship the devil, although, Ibrahim remarks, in truth “Satan worships them.” The violent clash of cultures betrays a history of tolerance and multiculturalism, and when Hussein, transported to Germany to recover, finally meets his death at the hands of skinheads, it all comes full circle; says Hussein’s brother, “When I think about it, it drives me crazy, Ibrahim...I mean, Muslim jihadis and Crusader Nazis committed a joint murder.” Livaneli’s slender narrative contains multitudes: It plays at several points with Kurdish, Arabian, and Turkish folklore in a provincial city that, Ibrahim says, has a “broken down fairy-tale atmosphere,” and at the same time it subtly critiques a present marked by civil war, the ministrations of celebrities like Angelina Jolie in the teeming refugee camps nearby, and a media insatiable for if-it-bleeds-it-leads stories of the exact sort that Ibrahim uncovers—and, we know as the story closes, he cannot help but file.
A brief but intensely emotional, memorable story that spans centuries and continents.Pub Date: June 29, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-63542-032-6
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Other Press
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2021
A pleasant if not entirely convincing tribute to the power of art.
A French art historian’s English-language fiction debut combines the story of a loving relationship between a grandfather and granddaughter with an enlightening discussion of art.
One day, when 10-year-old Mona removes the necklace given to her by her now-dead grandmother, she experiences a frightening, hour-long bout of blindness. Her parents take her to the doctor, who gives her a variety of tests and also advises that she see a psychiatrist. Her grandfather Henry tells her parents that he will take care of that assignment, but instead, he takes Mona on weekly visits to either the Louvre, the Musée d’Orsay, or the Centre Pompidou, where each week they study a single work of art, gazing at it deeply and then discussing its impact and history and the biography of its maker. For the reader’s benefit, Schlesser also describes each of the works in scrupulous detail. As the year goes on, Mona faces the usual challenges of elementary school life and the experiences of being an only child, and slowly begins to understand the causes of her temporary blindness. Primarily an amble through a few dozen of Schlesser’s favorite works of art—some well known and others less so, from Botticelli and da Vinci through Basquiat and Bourgeois—the novel would probably benefit from being read at a leisurely pace. While the dialogue between Henry and the preternaturally patient and precocious Mona sometimes strains credulity, readers who don’t have easy access to the museums of Paris may enjoy this vicarious trip in the company of a guide who focuses equally on that which can be seen and the context that can’t be. Come for the novel, stay for the introductory art history course.
A pleasant if not entirely convincing tribute to the power of art.Pub Date: Aug. 26, 2025
ISBN: 9798889661115
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Europa Editions
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
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