The Lustful Turk

by Anonymous

The infamous account of a European lady's life in a harem, an erotic novel set among the Harems of the Middle East and first published in1828. The title page of the 1828 edition previewed it as: "A history founded on facts, containing an interesting narrative of the cruel fate of the two young English ladies, named Silvia Carey and Emily Barlow. Fully explaining how Emily Barlow, and her servant, Eliza Gibbs, on their passage to India, were taken prisoner by an Algerine pirate, and made a present of to the Dey of Algiers; who, on the very night of their arrival debauched Emily. Containing also, every particular of the artful plans laid by the Dey, to get possession of the person of Silvia Carey - how he effected his purpose - with the particulars of her becoming a victim to his libidinous desires. Which recital is also interspersed with the histories of several other ladies confined in the Dey's Harem. One of which gives an account of the horrid practices then carrying on in several French and Italian convents by a society of monks, established at Algiers, under pretense of redeeming Christian skaves; but who, in reality, carried on an infamous traffic in young girls. Also an account of the sufferings of Eliza Gibbs, from the flogging propensities of the Bey of Tunis. With many other curious circumstances, until the reduction of Algiers by Lord Exmouth; by which means these particulars became known."

Genres: Erotica, Fiction, Romance, Classics

156 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1828

About the author

Books can be attributed to "Anonymous" for several reasons:

* They are officially published under that name
* They are traditional stories not attributed to a specific author
* They are religious texts not generally attributed to a specific author

Books whose authorship is merely uncertain should be attributed to Unknown.

See also: Anonymous

Reviews

[Mehmet]

I am going to over analysis this book as it is not really literature, it is smut pure and simple. What makes it different is it is historical smut, written in a time way before I and any of my family was born. As you can see from my name I am Turkish and as you can see from my written language I live in UK. So a book called the Lustful Turk makes me curious to read this for want of a better word novel. The time the book was written and the time it is set are totally different from know. Although Erotica is never a good outlet to study people perception on society, that is kinda of what I am doing. Having read Orientalism by Edward Said he created a work explaining the European attempt to demonise the middle-east and Islam. In a way this book is a product of that mystical world the European fantasied about. The portrait of the Turk in the story is stereotypical and racist, even the terms the unknown author uses to explain the Muslim are all European terms. There is also some confusion as to whenever he is a Algerian or Turkish. The poor treatment of the English maidens and there progress form virgins to lusty woman is pure sexist male thoughts. Well it is my fault I kinda knew what I was getting into, but I was interested into seeing this orientalist perspective that really still persist regarding the Muslims Harem. My final thoughts are while interesting I not going to lose any more thought over what is basically historical porn.

[T. K. Elliott (Tiffany) · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is erotica. Since it's really hard to review erotica without mentioning things that erotica is basically about, but which might give persons of delicate sensibilities the vapours, I've hidden the whole thing under a "spoiler" tag.


This book was quite hard to rate, but I finally settled on two stars because it wasn’t well enough written (even acknowledging that 19th-century erotica probably wasn’t meant to be great literature) to deserve any more. It’s an epistolary novel, told entirely as a series of letters - mostly from Emily Barlow to her friend, Sylvia Carey.

Emily, who is in love with Henry (Sylvia’s brother), gets sent off to India for reasons that are never made clear, and don’t matter because she never arrives. Instead, she and her maid, Eliza, end up getting kidnapped by pirates and sold as harem slaves. Emily ends up with the Dey of Algiers, and Eliza with the Dey of Tunis. Since this is erotica, what happens next is entirely predictable. Emily is raped by the Dey, but pretty soon realises that (after the whole messy, painful deflowering is over) sex is great, and the Dey is really good at it, so she’s entirely happy with the situation.

Emily gets to hear the stories of two other harem slaves - an Italian woman and a Greek girl. The Italian woman was captured on the way to Corsica with her new husband (she is so modest that she is still a virgin); the Greek girl is sold by a corrupt official after her father and fiance are murdered. The story is pretty much the same in all cases, with only the names changed. Additionally, there is a sideways move into the adventures of a pair of Catholic priests, who have a similar line in forcing young women to have sex with them, then selling them to the Turks - including a young novice nun who is faced with being buried alive after trying to escape her convent (after her brothers refused to testify that they forced her to enter it in the first place).

Meanwhile, Emily has been describing her new life as a harem slave in her letters to Sylvia, who is shocked and rather insulting about the Dey when she writes back. Since has been reading the letters, the Dey determines to kidnap Sylvia to punish her - as you do. He manages this, and embarks on a complex charade involving himself pretending to be a French physician and a fake marriage conducted by an English Jew pretending to be a priest. Sylvia, of course, also follows the pattern and becomes quite happy in her new life.

So far, so unoriginal, so distasteful. However, before we mount our 21st century politically-correct high horse and ride madly off in all directions, we should consider that “woman who gets blackmailed/threatened/bribed into a relationship with the hero” is still a staple plot device - in women’s fiction, written by women, for women. While this does not make rape any more acceptable, it does mean that we should consider that it isn’t limited to nineteenth-century erotica written by men. It’s alive and well and living in formula romances written by 21st-century women, although in slightly less blatant form. Likewise, the enduring popularity of “the sheikh”, “the Greek”, “the Italian” and more recently “the Russian mafia boss” in women’s fiction: are we talking racism and stereotype, or are we talking “exciting and exotic”? Whichever it is - and it could be both - modern romances, written by women for women, have the same issues as The Lustful Turk, and you can’t logically censure the one without applying the same standards to the other.

Anyway, moving back to the adventures of the Lustful Turk, all of this bedroom activity is brought to a sudden end by a new slave, who cuts off the Dey’s penis. The Dey then orders his physician to also cut off his testicles, since without the penis they are useless, and has the amputated parts preserved in jars of spirits of wine - one of which he gives to Emily, and the other to Sylvia. After which, the two girls are sent back to England.

Once back in England, the last letter discloses that the jars of wine spirits (and contents) have been donated to Sylvia’s friend who runs an expensive girls’ school; Sylvia’s friend shows them to her students, as a reward for good behaviour. Furthermore, Sylvia has married (a baronet, who has apparently not noticed that she is not the virgin he expected), but Emily is determined not to do so until she can find a man who is sufficiently charming and skilled to replace the Dey in her affections and her bed. She has a “young willing maid” who “auditions” all of her suitors - of whom seven out of ten have been found wanting. Emily discloses that she has hopes that the current one, an Irish earl, will pass the test.

This conclusion to the tale is somewhat unexpected. The “bad guys” - the Turks and the Catholic priests - are portrayed as lovers with great skill as well as stamina and charm (we don’t know about the Jew), able to secure any woman’s love and devotion. Whereas of the “good guys”, Henry is portrayed as a wet blanket who goes into a decline when Emily leaves for India and thereafter does nothing; the Italian woman’s husband is so unmanly that a month after the wedding he still hasn’t consummated the marriage; the Greek girl’s fiance gets stupidly and uselessly murdered (though it's in her defence, and it’s notable that she’s the only one who doesn’t completely fall for the Dey’s charms); the Italian novice nun’s brothers would rather leave her to be buried alive than admit that they forced her into the convent in the first place; Sylvia’s baronet husband is too stupid to notice he hasn’t married a virgin; and as for seven out of ten of Emily’s suitors - they’re just not worthy of her consideration.

Furthermore, the story ends not with the Dey going merrily on with his career of lasciviousness, but instead unable to have sex with anyone - a sort of enforced faithfulness to Emily and Sylvia. Meanwhile, far from being fallen women whose marriage prospects have been destroyed and now face a lifetime of misery and shame, Sylvia has married up (she is now a baronet’s wife) and Emily is determined not to marry at all until she can find a man who meets her high standards - hence the maid (not Emily!) auditioning the candidates. The current candidate is an earl, representing a huge leap in social status for Emily if she deems him worthy of her.

In short, the “foreigners” are consistently portrayed as more “manly” than the women’s male relatives and conventional lovers/husbands, and the two girls - far from being ruined by their experiences - return to England to social success. And the Dey’s parts have been handed off to Sylvia’s friend, not even kept as mementos - and how’s that for crushing to a man’s ego: you give a girl your genitals and she hands them off (like an unwanted birthday present) to be displayed to schoolgirls as a reward for learning their French verbs properly!

The book ends not with, as might be assumed, the men in control, but with the various men dead, mutilated, deceived, or discarded, and Emily and Sylvia in control.

Interesting!

[Fatbardha]

If you want to read shit literature from the Victorian era with historical smut and racist indoctrination of the Orient as a side dish, have a look at this one.
I bet everyone reading this now or at all times was very curious to see what the deal was from Edward Said’s Orientalism which I can say yeah that’s also me.

[Herb]

I will not be questioned

[Tristy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not my cup of tea, but if I were in to authentic Victorian rape fantasy erotica, there probably is no better book than this one!

[Aqua · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well, this is yet another entry in the "Why the hell did I just read this?" category. I read this after a podcast riffed on this book. Oh, boy. This one is still pretty bad. Worse than The Sheik in some ways.

Like The Sheik, this has plenty of racism. Unlike that book, it also contains slander towards Southern European people too. It has plenty of rape=love and kidnapping. The dey is literally the worse. He's so bad that I genuinely wonder who the hell would see him as likeable outside of someone with Stockholm Syndrome and thinking he's hot. All of the other characters are pieces of cardboard. Even the sex scenes are extremely awkward.

You maybe wondering, "If this book is that bad, then why isn't this given a one star rating and tossed to the Gates of Shame?" Glad you asked. Well...

At the end of the book, the dey kidnaps a Grecian girl, wanting her to be a part of his harem. Instead of falling for his "charm" immediately, she acts like any sane human being and defends herself from his forced advancements by cutting off his dick. Saddened by the fact that he can never have sex again, he sends the two girls back home to England. Each of them take a part of the severed member home in a bottle of wine. The girls hold tryouts for husbands The Bachelorette style based on how good the guys are in bed. The dey's cut off manhood is sent to an all-girl's boarding school with the intention that girls can gawk at it. That has to be the most cracked out ending to anything of this nature I've ever read in my life, and I'm including yandere anime fanfiction and anime that I've watched over the years in that statement. I can't make any of this shit up if I tried! I gotta admire it for that.

Give it this, this book maybe shit, but it went out with a bang. Still think it's shit, though. Don't check this out. There's so much better erotica out there.

[Beyza · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is all about deflowering virgins and Stockholm Syndrome...

The translator of the book, Bora Ercan, did a good job here (from English to Turkish).

I will not mention about orientalist view of Eastern culture or Harem according to the Victorians because other reviewers already may have mentioned that.

Finally, I could not find this book as philosophical or adventurous as the books of M. de Sade or Sacher Masoch... If you love erotica, you may read them since they have more depths than this one.

[Dana · Rating 1 out of 5]

This one was certainly different. I went from thinking this story was certainly written by a man with no clue as to how a woman would react if this really happened to her. Very unbelievable. To thinking it was a horrible story, but I am a woman and know how I would feel in a situation like this. Stockholm Syndrome!!

[yasmin · Rating 1 out of 5]

list of terms used to describe the dey's penis, in no particular order: "terror of virgins", "delight of women", "virgin-stretcher", "instrument of torment", "pinnacle of strength", "rack of pleasure", "potent instrument", "love's arrow", "dreadful engine"... it keeps going. this was a hilarious read please nobody read it

[Catherine · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's all about virgins getting deflowered. Don't read it all at once. Read one sex scene, then go do something sensible. Brush the cat or take out the trash. Parcel out the deflowerings, if you can. Because nothing is worse than a stale virgin.

[Sarah AlObaid · Rating 1 out of 5]

Had to read it for a class. Please don’t read it.

[Raoul · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quick read.

[Sam Hirst]

Reading this as a context for the later 'sheik romance' or 'desert romance' in the 20th century, pointing towards a problematic history of intertwined orientalism and erotica

[Fallen · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Lustful Turk is one of those erotic classics that you’d find on every “best of” list; and I think that’s because it’s a tale that’s proven timeless. It’s vivid, sometimes violent in its explicit details. However, it falters as a series of “letters” to the downside of the framing device being a correspondence. Some excerpts come off as more clipped than carnal or climatic, which thin what should’ve been a viscous narrative. I got a similar impression from in Dracula as it seemed more prolonged rather than strengthened in its correspondences, in addition to indistinct albeit meticulous likenesses of its narrators.

[Liam · Rating 3 out of 5]

Amusing and also revealing. See my review at [http://trepanatus.blogspot.com/2006/0...]

[notgettingenough · Rating 2 out of 5]

There are much better examples from the period.

[Carolyn · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is terrible.

[Stewart Home · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is a prime example of reactionary crud. But there can be a point to reading books like this - you may want to unpack the text through the prism of works such as Edward Said's "Orientalism".

[Bridget]

Trite story of the innocent in the harem.