I Am Istanbul
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
This delightful tour of a site full of both history and mythology, populated by men and women with lives and problems that are entirely real, down to earth, and by no means romantic, serves as an introduction not only to the city of a thousand names but to the very spirit of its inhabitants, their daily worries as well as the grand tapestry in which they all labor to find happiness.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Uzuner (The Sound of Fishsteps) attempts an admirable but rather impossible task: squeezing the turbulent and massive history of Istanbul into a novel brimming with all its sights, wonders, and conflicts. The narrator is the city itself: "Queen of Queens, City of Cities" and "object of the world's desire," Istanbul addresses the reader with a grand, overwhelming voice. Characters from all walks of life populate the novel a cleaning lady, a bartender, and a successful businessman and their storylines faintly follow the main character Belgin's final return to the city, after years spent abroad, to act on her love for Ayhan. Uzuner's obsession with mosaic-style representation addressing religion, East versus West, the "hijacked culture" of Turkey, being an "outsider" at home, and ethnic minorities produces two-dimensional characters that merely mouth lines assigned to them, trying to explain what is special about this city. Their voices lack believability or strong emotional pull: after a while they begin to sound like regurgitated Wikipedia pages. These lengthy explanations disturb the flow of the novel, making it a prime example of telling and not showing. Sadly, this novel comes closer to being a "Turkey 101" course rather than an engrossing work.
