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62nd out of 135 books
—
16 voters
Portrait of a Turkish Family
by
Irfan Orga,
Ateş Orga
Describes in chilling, yet affectionate, detail the disintegration of a wealthy Ottoman family, both financially and emotionally. It is rich with the scent of fin de siecle Istanbul in the last days of the Ottoman Empire. His mother was a beauty, married at thirteen, as befitted a Turkish woman of her class. His grandmother was an eccentric autocrat, determined at all cost...more
Paperback, 316 pages
Published
June 1st 2003
by Eland
(first published 1950)
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Batılılar çok okuyormuş bu kitabı, öyle ün yapmış. Osmanlı'nın son yıllarında İstanbul'da yaşayan varlıklı bir ailenin 1. Dünya Savaşı sonrası tüm varlığını kaybetmesini konu alıyor. Bunları anlatırken bir yandan da, o dönemin İstanbul'unu, yaşlılarını, erkeklerini, kadınlarını ve çocuklarını anlatıyor. Ben okuduğumdan memnun kaldım. Yeri gelmişken hemen hemen aynı konuyu İstanbullu bir Yahudi ailenin gözünden okumak isterseniz Brigitte Peskine'nin "İstanbul'da Bir Yahudi Ailesi" adlı romanı da...more
Written 1948, published 1950 in UK and USA.
Irfan Orga, 1908 - 1970
What a painful story, painful childhood, painful life! It’s above all a psychological portrait of his childhood [in Istanbul], his family, and his relationships with them. Given his fairly awful childhood, his later emotional handicaps in life are quite understandable. Insight into the personalities of his mother and his grandmother are remarkable.
You get a feel for the Istanbul of WWI and of the 1920s and 1930s.
Afterword by son A...more
Irfan Orga, 1908 - 1970
What a painful story, painful childhood, painful life! It’s above all a psychological portrait of his childhood [in Istanbul], his family, and his relationships with them. Given his fairly awful childhood, his later emotional handicaps in life are quite understandable. Insight into the personalities of his mother and his grandmother are remarkable.
You get a feel for the Istanbul of WWI and of the 1920s and 1930s.
Afterword by son A...more
Ah, this book just wound me around its little finger and transfixed me with its heartbreaking saga. I found it an utterly fascinating story- a telling of the fortunes of a Turkish family from the early 1900s through horrendous WWI and on into the 1940s. I originally was expecting a story to juxtaposition against the Armenian story I just finished reading since the Armenian holocaust happened in Turkey. But this story does not mention that holocaust; this wealthy Turkish family suffered its own d...more
Portrait of a Turkish Family is another Turkey/WWI story, a memoir, which I allowed myself to be talked into buying by a bookseller in Istanbul despite its price--about $24 for a paperback? He swore it was fantastic, offered me a moneyback guarantee (Sure, I’m going to mail it back from CA for a refund.) But I bought it, and it passed some hours on the plane and added some insight into Turkey past and present. The Turkish family in question is a moneyed one, or was until WWI came along. I imagi...more
What a wonderful book! This was a recommended read in my Lonely Planet guidebook so I purchased it to take on our trip to Turkey. I didn't read much of it while over there, we were too busy, but wish I had because I would have looked up some of the places where the author lived or went to school. As it was I loved reading about a place in Istanbul and knowing just where it was and what it looked like. Sometimes writers have a way of writing or describing that makes you visualize everything so cl...more
In de autobiografie Aan de oevers van de Bosporus beschrijft Irfan Orga zijn jeugd en eerste loopbaan bij het Turkse leger in de eerste decennia van de 20e eeuw. Geboren in een welvarende familie in Istanbul ondervindt Irfan met zijn broer en zus echter met het uitbreken van de Eerste Wereldoorlog de gevolgen van armoede, verlies van in dienst opgeroepen vader en de politieke omwentelingen en de gewijzigde praktizering van de islam. De in onze begrippen nog jonge oma blijft de mater familias, wa...more
I started out on our trip to Istanbul reading Pamuk's quintessential book "Istanbul: Memories and the City" but I did not find myself getting very far in it. The melancholic Istanbul that Pamuk describes was not what I was seeing around me and I felt disconnected with his book. This book, A Portrait of a Turkish Family by Irfan Orga, was recommended by a friend and as soon as I looked at her copy I was sucked in. I bought (and paid probably too much for) a paperback copy at an english bookstore...more
NO SPOILERS!!!!!
I am making a bet with myself. Here it is. Let's see if I am proven correct! I think I will end up giving this book four or five stars! So far I have only read 13%, but I am totally captivated. The author, Irfan Orga, begins by describing his early childhood, growing up in Istanbul. He was born in 1908. It is, as usual, how an author expresses himself that makes or breaks a book. I adore the writing style. Please, do yourself a favour and check out the excerpt available at Amazon...more
I am making a bet with myself. Here it is. Let's see if I am proven correct! I think I will end up giving this book four or five stars! So far I have only read 13%, but I am totally captivated. The author, Irfan Orga, begins by describing his early childhood, growing up in Istanbul. He was born in 1908. It is, as usual, how an author expresses himself that makes or breaks a book. I adore the writing style. Please, do yourself a favour and check out the excerpt available at Amazon...more
I bought this in Istanbul and then couldn't get my face out of it, and it wasn't because I was caught up in the moment of being in the streets Irfan Orga grew up it.
It starts off before WWI, he introduces us to his family and takes us through to the 1940s in London. It is a terrific read and wonderful insight into life in a fabulous city. The family endured the most unimaginable changes in their lifestyle and, at great cost to his mother. This is the sort of book Anne Deveson should have read be...more
It starts off before WWI, he introduces us to his family and takes us through to the 1940s in London. It is a terrific read and wonderful insight into life in a fabulous city. The family endured the most unimaginable changes in their lifestyle and, at great cost to his mother. This is the sort of book Anne Deveson should have read be...more
This is truly one of the most spellbinding reads I have ever had. From the begging you are drawn into another world, a world we find it difficult to imagine now, Ottoman Istanbul, as the first world war is about to change everything forever.
We see the dramatic and heartbreaking changes through the eyes of a young boy born into a rich family, as the war turns Istanbul and their happy carefree lives upside down.
I really cannot do this book justice and is a must read for anyone interested in cultu...more
We see the dramatic and heartbreaking changes through the eyes of a young boy born into a rich family, as the war turns Istanbul and their happy carefree lives upside down.
I really cannot do this book justice and is a must read for anyone interested in cultu...more
This was a good book and the writing was enjoyable and at times even beautiful, but for some reason that's hard to identify it disappointed me in several aspects. I appreciated it for teaching me more about Turkish culture and history in an intimate and authentic way only a novel can, but I felt that as far as the actual story went, the character development lacked depth because the author glossed over too many important events in his life. For instance, the decade he spent in the military schoo...more
I've been trying to read books about Turkey in preparation for a trip I hope to take in September. I really loved this book. The author writes with a lot of compassion and love for his family and the difficult choices his parents (primarily his mother) had to make, even while giving voice to the hurt he felt as a child having to live with those decisions. It's also filled with a lot of historical and cultural information about the country. It was a really wonderful read. This edition also has an...more
A heart-rending story of human love, pain and loss. Well-crafted, sensitive account of a Turkish boy born into an extended aristocratic Turkish family in pre-WWI Istanbul. Very warm and and colorful descriptions of his early family life; however, by the time he was 6 years old the world came crashing down on his idyllic existence when Turkey was drawn into the war as a German ally. Story is told with great awareness and pathos, and surprising little bitterness. A quiet testament to the ravaging...more
Jun 15, 2010
Lynn
rated it
5 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
middle-east-past-and-present
What an amazing book! I have to say it is one of my adult favorites and I recommend it to just about everyone I talk to.
I went to Istanbul in 2008 and read most everything I had brought with me. There was a great little english language bookstore in our area where they prided themselves on their selection of books. I have to say I was not happy at paying almost 40lira for this book but it came recommended and the clerk promised I could return it if I was unhappy... needless to say I devoured the...more
I went to Istanbul in 2008 and read most everything I had brought with me. There was a great little english language bookstore in our area where they prided themselves on their selection of books. I have to say I was not happy at paying almost 40lira for this book but it came recommended and the clerk promised I could return it if I was unhappy... needless to say I devoured the...more
This book is amazing. I admit it drags in some places but even still. I really related to the author of this story and it was very weird for me. I have never in my life had the thought " I bet I have something in common with a man born in the early 1980's in the Ottoman Empire". Turns out, I kind of do. His mom's story broke my heart and while some may think him heartless for how things ended with her, I understand. Part of me thinks he's a coward for it, but most of me admires him for letting h...more
A book that holds some good lessons for those that read it. Adversity through extremely difficult times and the realization that not everything which starts well ends well. I wish more historical facts of the period were added and it was a bit boring at parts. Overall a decent read especially for those interested in the transition from Ottoman rule to formation of the Republic in Turkey and how this changed the traditional Turkish family dynamic.
An excellent biography. It provides a valuable insight to life in Istanbul in the first 30 years of the twentieth century. It is a biography that makes you feel close to the characters and want to know what happened to them later int her life. At times it was a page turner and never at any time did I feel like I needed to skim because there was too much detail, as often is the case with biographies.
This book was written in English by a ex-patriot former Turkish fighter pilot about his experiences as a child and young adult beginning during the last days of the Ottomans. The first 2/3rds of the book deal with World War One and it's immediate aftermath. The picture it paints of Turkish culture and living in Istanbul are loving and enlightening. The last third of the book focus primarily on the author's military career and disintegration of his family due to his mother's mental illness.
The bo...more
The bo...more
A marvellously compelling history, peopled with fascinating individuals; this is one of the best books I have read about Turkey. It captures the nation at a time of great change and depicts a fascinating family - whose daily lives and varying responses to the seismic shifts in the world around them reveal much about both Turkey's past and the development of modern Turkey.
This was a required text for my Muslim History class. At first, I found it quite uninteresting but when the time came for me to read 150 pages in three days, it became very interesting. ;) No, this book is a very good read. There were points were I couldn't put it down. My professor was right in having us read this in our study of the late Ottoman Empire. It is by no means a happy-go-lucky story about a boy and his family. The first word someone in my class said about this book was "depressing"...more
A fascinating memoir about growing up in a wealthy Ottoman family. World War I absolutely changed his whole world and the whole city of Istanbul. I think what stayed with me more than anything was that fact that everything could be change in an instant as well as the intimate glimpse of family life in a Turkish family.
Oct 21, 2012
rosshalde
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
turkish-literature
Reading this book makes you feel like you're home. Of course this is my opinion as a Turk. On the other hand vivid childhood memories are astonishing. I wish to read more chapters about the period of the author's youth but unfortunately this parts are shorter than chapters which are about childhood. The book looks like finished with a rush but still worth the reading.
Lonely Planet recommended this book as a must-read before going to Turkey. What a fascinating and intimate portrait of a family from 1914 to 1940. The well-to-do family falls into poverty when the father is killed in World War I. I learned a lot about Turkey as it transitioned from the Ottoman Empire to a republic.
This book exemplifies fine writing, but is it a suitable primary source to be analyzed and considered in historical documentation? Who cares, it's riveting, exciting, and beautifully written and you will not be able to put it down.
This memoir was written in the 1940s and is great reading 70 years later. A moving, tragic peek into history as people really lived it. If you plan to travel to Turkey, read it. If you don't plan on going to Turkey, read it anyway.
This book was recommended to me this summer in a book shop in Istanbul...as the definitive work on 20th century Turkish life. I'm enjoying it tremendously. The story starts in the author's home located behind the Blue Mosque. That got my attention immediately. As a tourist, I of course had visited the Blue Mosque. It describes the changes in the life of a privileged family with the advent of World War I. Autobiographical in nature, it nicely portrays the growth, and disintegration of the charact...more
worth reading if you are interested in the lives and challenges a wealthy turkish family faced during and after wwI. a little disjointed because the book was originally much longer.
The first half of the book is best, where the author describes his youth in detail, growing up in Istanbul around the first world war. First living the good life, but falling into poverty after the death, in war, of his father and the burning down of his parental home.
The second half of the book, which starts with his enlisting at military school, is glossed over without attention for too much detail, which is a pity, for here the book could have been so much more.
It is interested to note, the...more
The second half of the book, which starts with his enlisting at military school, is glossed over without attention for too much detail, which is a pity, for here the book could have been so much more.
It is interested to note, the...more
I found this book very interesting, an enjoyable read, and a useful view of life in an extremely wealthy Turkish family of the turn of the 20th century. I'm not sure that it is therefore a good picture of more general Turkish culture, but it was a good story. It gave me a beginning sense of the events in Turkey in the first half of the 20th century from a personal perspective. Irfan's writing style was poetic, and his story was moving: a tender reminisence of times past and the events that had s...more
I loved this book. It's a true story of an Ottoman family living before the collapse of the Empire and after. The author brought the characters alive for me.
| topics | posts | views | last activity | |
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| Around the World ...: Chrissie recommends Portrait of a Turkish Family | 1 | 14 | Sep 04, 2011 01:50am |
Irfan Orga was a Turkish fighter pilot, staff officer, and author. He published books on many areas of Turkish life, cookery, and history, as well as a biography of Atatürk, and his own autobiography (Portrait of a Turkish Family). He also wrote two children’s books. Orga was born into a wealthy Ottoman Turkish family in Istanbul. Soon World War I broke and his life was changed forever. Orga witne...more
More about Irfan Orga...
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“A whole new life at fifty, all because I had become entranced with both the Turkish culture and with Kazim—who one friend called a careening festival of a human being and another called an alcoholic Kurdish carpet salesman. I called him a catalyst.”
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“My head was dizzy, but what of that? Float, stupid wooden head, and care nothing for tomorrow.”
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1 person liked it
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Apr 29, 2011 06:47am