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A review by jaclyn_sixminutesforme
Older Brother by Mahir Güven
5.0
After loving Kover’s translation of DISORIENTAL by Négar Djavadi, I heard her mention in an interview she did with @thereadingwomen that she had another upcoming release - cue me putting OLDER BROTHER on my TBR without knowing anything else!
The story itself jumps between the perspectives of two brothers in a Franco-Syrian family - older brother is an app-based driver in Paris, disrupting his taxi-driver father’s livelihood and part of the many examples of society closing opportunities to the family. The narrative thread about the father really dives into this on a much deeper level, and made for an interesting juxtaposition with older brother’s perspective particularly. Younger brother is a nurse who had moved to Syria to volunteer in a Muslim humanitarian organization. Things very quickly transpire to be more complex for all three men, particularly the brothers, and what ensues is a really well paced and complex juxtaposition of contemporary social politics (what the blurb so perfectly describes as the “Uberized lives of workers”) and the reach and looming specter that is terrorism. A really clever an unique read that is like nothing I’ve read before, and which completely took me be surprise with how quickly I connected with the narrative thematically. Well worth a read!
The story itself jumps between the perspectives of two brothers in a Franco-Syrian family - older brother is an app-based driver in Paris, disrupting his taxi-driver father’s livelihood and part of the many examples of society closing opportunities to the family. The narrative thread about the father really dives into this on a much deeper level, and made for an interesting juxtaposition with older brother’s perspective particularly. Younger brother is a nurse who had moved to Syria to volunteer in a Muslim humanitarian organization. Things very quickly transpire to be more complex for all three men, particularly the brothers, and what ensues is a really well paced and complex juxtaposition of contemporary social politics (what the blurb so perfectly describes as the “Uberized lives of workers”) and the reach and looming specter that is terrorism. A really clever an unique read that is like nothing I’ve read before, and which completely took me be surprise with how quickly I connected with the narrative thematically. Well worth a read!