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A review by cwgrieves
Istanbul Istanbul by Burhan Sönmez
5.0
This is an absolutely incredible book. Beautifully written and perfectly translated by Ümit Hussein. At times it is harrowing and difficult to read - especially when you consider that the author was a political prisoner in Turkey - but it is more than worth the effort.
The dichotomy that Sönmez creates throughout - between reality and fantasy, both within and outside of the cell - is really interesting. He adds to this with beautiful and powerful descriptions of horrific circumstances; the delicacy of his words contrasting sharply with the subject. There were more than a few times that I caught myself reading a sentence or a paragraph three or four times over because they were so wonderfully well crafted.
My only criticism of the book would be that the characters voices were quite similar, especially when they were discussing the past. This may not be an issue in the original Turkish, but I did need to check back to the beginning of a chapter to remind myself of the narrator more than once. To be honest though, this would have been solved by putting the name of the narrator in the running heads.
Istanbul Istanbul is more than worthy of five stars. I'd highly recommend it. I'll be looking out for more books by Sönmez and browsing through the OR Books catalogue.
The dichotomy that Sönmez creates throughout - between reality and fantasy, both within and outside of the cell - is really interesting. He adds to this with beautiful and powerful descriptions of horrific circumstances; the delicacy of his words contrasting sharply with the subject. There were more than a few times that I caught myself reading a sentence or a paragraph three or four times over because they were so wonderfully well crafted.
My only criticism of the book would be that the characters voices were quite similar, especially when they were discussing the past. This may not be an issue in the original Turkish, but I did need to check back to the beginning of a chapter to remind myself of the narrator more than once. To be honest though, this would have been solved by putting the name of the narrator in the running heads.
Istanbul Istanbul is more than worthy of five stars. I'd highly recommend it. I'll be looking out for more books by Sönmez and browsing through the OR Books catalogue.