Anatolian Days & Nights
A Love Affair with Turkey, Land of Dervishes, Goddesses, and Saints
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2.0 • 1 Rating
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
A chronicle of two women’s travels through turkey
When Joy Stocke and Angie Brenner meet on the balcony of a guesthouse in a small resort town on the Mediterranean coast of Turkey, they think they have only a mutual friend and a summer dream in common. Soon, they discover a shared love of travel, history, culture, cuisine, and literature; and they begin a ten-year odyssey through Turkey.
Inspired by the poetry of thirteenth-century mystic Jelaluddin Rumi, Brenner and Stocke journey to central Turkey for the Whirling Dervishes Festival. A visit to a Turkish bath becomes a lesson in sensuality and patience. Their interest in the cults of the mother goddess takes them to Ephesus, the Black Sea, and east into Mesopotamia. Through intuition, experience, and a bit of serendipity, Brenner and Stocke find excitement, friendship, and love, and learn how and why Turkey—a country that holds the keys to Western Civilization—continues to grow in world importance.
Travel writing with literary value, Anatolian Days and Nights will appeal to armchair travelers as well as those about to hit the road.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In their vivid memoir, Stocke, a travel writer from New Jersey; and Brenner, a former travel bookstore owner from California, document their travels through Turkey, spanning nearly 10 years and stretching from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean coast, and from the Iranian border to Istanbul. Relayed through the alternating voices of the two authors are travel anecdotes that touch on Turkey's splendid and sordid past. They learn of Ottoman Sultan Beyazit II's welcoming of over 100,000 Sephardic Jews driven out of Spain in 1492, but also of the atrocities suffered by the Armenians in the early 20th century. Every destination on their itinerary is home to ghosts of Turkey's past, but the friends also take time to enjoy "whitewashed fa ades tinged sienna in the late afternoon sun" and "breeze rustl through the cobbled streets." Over-eager guides embody the country's tumultuous national identity a m lange of Muslims, Christians, Jews, Armenians, Turks, and more and descriptions of the past weaved into the present provide a rich portrait of the region. Stocke and Brenner make a show of grappling with the country's contradictions, but ultimately their story feels more the product of research than a reflection of their true affection for Anatolia.
