Tales Alive in Turkey

by Warren S. Walker, Ahmet E. Uysal

English (translation)Original Turkish

326 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1966

Reviews

[Alan Bach · Rating 4 out of 5]

The sections are a bit of a mixed bag, but overall the quality of the writing was quite good. It starts with supernatural stories where the logic of the characters and the chain of cause and effect are quite nonsensical, but the sense of adventure and whimsy are strong enough that I still had quite a lot of fun.

The other stories in the book after the first section are mostly only a couple of pages, but besides the sections mentioned in the paragraph below mostly somehow avoided folktales' usual problem of feeling too unsubstantial or mundane. I especially liked the weird reasonings characters have in sections II to IV.

I found the last section and the one on Koroghlu be disappointing. The former too abruptly go from setup to resolution even for how short the stories are, and the latter despite supposedly being a big character in the folklore didn't prove much of his worth here.

[Laura]

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