Review by New York Times Review
Armenian in Istanbul A Turkish novelist's characters struggle to acknowledge their, and Turkey's, past. THERE is a moral putrescence peculiar to the denial of genocide. Yet denial's practitioners are all around us. The Sudanese government calls the butchers of Darfur "self-defense militias." The Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, dismisses the Holocaust as "myth." In an official government report, the Turkish Historical Society describes the slaughter of more than a million Armenians between 1914 and 1918 as "relocations" with "some untoward incidents." It seems obvious that the Turkish novelist Elif Shafak smells the rot in her homeland. Indeed, "The Bastard of Istanbul," her sixth novel and the second written in English, recently led to a suit by the right-wing attorney Kemal Kerincsiz, who declared that Shafak's Armenian characters were "insulting Turkishness" by referring to the "millions" of Armenians "massacred" by "Turkish butchers" who "then contentedly denied it all." Earlier, Kerincsiz sued Turkey's best-known novelist, the Nobel Prize-winner Orhan Pamuk, for telling a Swiss journalist that "30,000 Kurds and one million Armenians were killed in these lands, and nobody but me dares to talk about it." Pamuk's isolation is less than complete and his stance not entirely daring. Kerincsiz and others have brought about 60 similar cases, a majority concerning the Armenian genocide, and not one has resulted in prison time. Kerincsiz, who helps organize demonstrations to coincide with the court appearances of the writers he sues, opposes Turkey's bid for membership in the European Union, and he acknowledges that these circus displays of his country's censorship laws aid his cause. Although the international literary community has rallied behind Pamuk and Shafak, both of whose cases were dismissed, there has been decidedly less clamor about the suits brought against Turkish-Armenian journalists, underpaid translators and long-standing political activists. At the same time, Turkish nationalists have charged that Pamuk's Nobel and Shafak's place in the spotlight have had more to do with their persecution than with the merits of their work. The critical consensus on Pamuk is undeniably strong, that on Shafak far less substantial. Most of her novels have not been reviewed in the West, and with the recent uproar she has become more discussed than read. In this new book, she has taken on a subject of deep moral consequence. But is the work worthy of its subject? "The Bastard of Istanbul," set in the United States and Turkey, concerns two families - one Turkish, living in Istanbul, and the other Armenian, divided between Tucson and San Francisco. (Shafak is currently an assistant professor of Near Eastern studies at the University of Arizona; she commutes between Tucson and Istanbul.) An ardent feminist, Shafak populates her novel with women. It's no surprise, then, that Mustafa, the Turkish man at the center of the plot, is more of an enigma than a character. First seen in a Tucson supermarket as a college student, he falls for and soon marries a young American who has recently divorced her Armenian husband. Not only does his new wife enjoy offending her Armenian in-laws with a Turkish spouse, she also relishes the idea that her baby daughter will have a Turkish stepfather. That child, Armanoush, endures shuttle parenting, moving between her mother in Arizona and her father and his relatives in San Francisco. Shafak sketches these Armenians flatly and superficially, as uniformly and fiercely anti-Turk-and as over-protectively fretful about beautiful and bookish Armanoush. Instead of exploring her roots with her own survivor family, she makes contact with Armenian-Americans online, joining a chat group dedicated to intellectual issues, including combating Turkish denial of the massacres. At 21, Armanoush somewhat illogically decides to travel to Istanbul, where none of her Armenian relatives remain. She stays with her stepfather's Turkish family while keeping her mother and father ignorant of her whereabouts. The family this young woman encounters is a confusing swirl of four generations of women that includes a great-grandmother suffering from Alzheimer's disease; a disapproving, distant and angry grandmother; her four daughters and one great-granddaughter. The eldest daughter is a self-styled Muslim mystic; another is a high-school teacher, and yet another a schizophrenic who lives in a fantasy world. The youngest runs a tattoo parlor and has an illegitimate daughter, the bastard of the novel's title. Keeping all these women straight isn't crucial since they function chiefly as adornments of Shafak's magic realism, the inhabitants of a supernatural personal history. We learn, for example, that the men of the family for "generations after generations ... had died young and unexpectedly," a contrivance that explains why Mustafa is living in Tucson and has never returned to Istanbul to see his four sisters. Armanoush's visit, which begins as an impulsive spun of tourism, unexpectedly leads to a far darker explanation of her stepfather's exile. (Those who wish to read the novel and not have the ending spoiled should stop here.) She inadvertently helps reveal Mustafa's secret - that he raped his youngest sister, that this sister covered up for him and that her child is a product of incest. It takes the mystic sister, with the help of an evil djinni, to bring about both her brother's death and his daughter's discovery of her origins. MUSTAFA'S crime is meant, presumably, to symbolize Turkey's long-denied history of genocide. But the fate of the Armenians is by no means obscure. In fact, scholars around the world have documented it with precision. Unlike the members of the Armenian diaspora, Mustafa's sister willfully hides the circumstances of her rape - although it's difficult to believe that this miniskirted, high-heeled, radically irreverent woman would have engaged in such subterfuge. When the novel's skeleton finally dances out of its flimsy closet, it's clear that although Shafak may be a writer of moral compunction she has yet to become - in English, at any rate - a good novelist. A valuable moment in the klieg lights has been squandered, but Shafak, still in her 30s, has more than enough time to grow into a writer whose artistry matches her ambition. The publication of Shafak's book led to a lawsuit accusing the novel of 'insulting Turkishness.' Lorraine Adams, a writer in residence at the New School and the author of a novel, "Harbor," is a regular contributor to the Book Review.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [October 27, 2009]
Review by Booklist Review
The new Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk has faced charges for making anti-Turkish remarks regarding the long denied mass killings of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire during World War I. Acclaimed Turkish writer Shafak has also been hauled into court for insulting Turkishness. The case was dropped, and her bold and penetrating tale of the tragic repercussions of the Armenian genocide will live on. In her second novel in English following The Saint of Incipient Insanities (2004), Shafak tells a many-faceted, mischievously witty, and daringly dramatic story that is at once a study in compassion, a shrewd novel of ideas, a love song to Istanbul, and a sensuous and whirling satire. The novel's ruling force is gorgeous Zeliha, the unapologetically sexy proprietor of an Istanbul tattoo parlor. An unwed mother at 19, she has raised her daughter, Asya (now 19 herself and obsessed with Johnny Cash), in a chaotic, food-centric household that includes her mother, grandmother, and three sisters: Banu, the pious clairvoyant; Cevriye, the high-strung history teacher; and Feride, the neurotic. The sisters haven't seen their Americanized brother, Mustafa, for almost 20 years, and are stunned when his 19-year-old stepdaughter, Armanoush, whose mother is from Kentucky and whose father is Armenian, arrives in Istanbul to search for her Armenian roots. As Asya and Armanoush forge a tentative friendship unaware of all that they actually share, others panic over the looming revelation of shocking secrets. Shafak weaves an intricate and vibrant saga of repression and freedom, cultural clashes and convergences, pragmatism and mysticism, and crimes and retribution, subtly revealing just how inextricably entwined we all are, whatever our heritage or beliefs. --Donna Seaman Copyright 2006 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In her second novel written in English (The Saint of Incipient Insanities was the first), Turkish novelist Shafak tackles Turkish national identity and the Armenian "question" in her signature style. In a novel that overflows with a kitchen sink's worth of zany characters, women are front and center: Asya Kazanci, an angst-ridden 19-year-old Istanbulite is the bastard of the title; her beautiful, rebellious mother, Zeliha (who intended to have an abortion), has raised Asya among three generations of complicated and colorful female relations (including religious clairvoyant Auntie Banu and bar-brawl widow, Auntie Cevriye). The Kazanci men either die young or take a permanent hike like Mustafa, Zeliha's beloved brother who immigrated to America years ago. Mustafa's Armenian-American stepdaughter, Armanoush, who grew up on her family's stories of the 1915 genocide, shows up in Istanbul looking for her roots and for vindication from her new Turkish family. The Kazanci women lament Armanoush's family's suffering, but have no sense of Turkish responsibility for it; Asya's boho cohorts insist there was no genocide at all. As the debate escalates, Mustafa arrives in Istanbul, and a long-hidden secret connecting the histories of the two families is revealed. Shafak was charged with "public denigration of Turkishness" when the novel was published in Turkey earlier this year (the charges were later dropped). She incorporates a political taboo into an entertaining and insightful ensemble novel, one that posits the universality of family, culture and coincidence. (Jan. 22) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Through the Armenian daughter of their distant brother's wife, four unconventional sisters and their friend Asya ("the bastard of Istanbul") discover connections to the 1915 Armenian genocide. Never mind that this novel, Shafak's second written in English, was a best seller in Turkey; it contributed to the author's being tried this month for expressing anti-Turkish sentiments. Online readers' guide. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
An astonishingly rich and lively story of an Istanbul family whose mixed up heritage mirrors the complexity of Turkish society. Shafak (The Gaze, 2006), whom the Turkish government has put on trial for "denigrating Turkishness," writes here about the 1915 massacre of Armenians. The four Kazanci sisters live together with their mother and paternal grandmother in Istanbul, their bother Mustafa having been sent to Arizona as a young man to avoid the Kazanci curse: The men of the family tend to die by age 41. When the youngest sister, rebellious Zeliha, has a daughter out of wedlock, she refuses to name the father. Calling Zeliha auntie although she knows their relationship, Aysa grows up in this household of women. Zeliha runs a tattoo parlor; her sisters include a devout Muslim seer, a nationalistic history teacher and a batty feminist. To escape her doting aunts and grandmothers, Aysa hangs out with coffeehouse intellectuals, including a cartoonist indicted by the government for cartoons mocking the prime minister. Defensive about her lack of a father, Aysa takes an existential view of life that denies the importance of the past. Meanwhile in America, Armanoush is born to an Armenian father and American mother. After her parents divorce, Armanoush's mother marries Mustafa, who barely acknowledges his Turkish roots. Armanoush spends large chunks of her childhood with her father's loving Armenian family, which clings to history and long simmering bitterness against the Turks. Increasingly drawn to her Armenian roots, Armanoush travels to Istanbul (without telling her parents) to learn more of her family history. She stays with the Kazancis, who are astounded when she tells them what Turks did to Armenians. As Asya and Armanoush become friends, myths--ethnic, familial and personal--explode. Despite a misstep into melodrama concerning Mustafa, Shafak handles her large cast of characters and plotting with finesse. A hugely ambitious exploration of complex historical realities handled with an enchantingly light touch. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
