Synopses & Reviews
Hikmet's final book--an autobiographical novel about a man who is imprisoned for being a Communist, his friends, and the women he loved. Considered to be a major work in his oeuvre. This is the first publication in English translation.
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Hikmet’s commitment to accessibility ensures that the novel is never obscure or confusing, despite sparingly shifting between first- and third-person narration…like cutting from medium-shot to close-up or vice versa, that alters our emotional perspective on the characters." Booklist
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" " Booklist
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" " James Burt
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" " ForeWard Reviews
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" " William Armstrong Hurriyet Daily News (Turkey)
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...a written gift of memory and experience. ...The personal reflections are humorous, the experimental delivery is exciting, and the drama is always profound. One would be hard pressed to find a similar personal reflection on the printed page that reaches such poetic heights." James Burt
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...one of the first and most important 'European' novels written in Turkey: its horizons are not limited to the national issues of Turkey, it explores the basic values of life, and its heroes live cosmopolitan lives." William Armstrong Hurriyet Daily News (Turkey)
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…the crowning achievement of the monumental poet's late exile years…. a kind of fictionalized autobiography….Hikmet… simultaneously tell[s] one man's story and the story of a whole generation, artistically uniting his earlier struggles with those of his contemporaries." ForeWard Reviews
Synopsis
A contemporary international classic, available in English for the first time.
About the Author
Nazim Hikmet is considered Turkey's greatest modern poet. For his Communist views, he was imprisoned in Turkey and his work was banned. His poetry has been translated into more than fifty languages. He won the World Peace Prize (the USSR's equivalent of the Nobel) in 1950. He died in 1963 in exile.Mutlu Konuk Blasing, a native of Istanbul, is Professor of English at Brown University. Her books include Lyric Poetry: The Pain and the Pleasure of Words. She is the co-translator (with Randy Blasing) of the renowned English translations of Nazim Hikmet, and the author of four scholarly books on American poetry.