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What Members Thought
An interesting story that provokes interest in the real historical figures that inspired it, not least Halide Edip Adıvar, the Turkish novelist and feminist political leader.
The author Frances Kazan, clearly passionate about Ottoman/Turkish history, was married to the film director Elia Kazan who was born in Istanbul.
The Dervish is a novel about Mary, a young American widow who loses her husband in the 1st world war and decides to leave America and join her sister in Istanbul, her sister's husba ...more
The author Frances Kazan, clearly passionate about Ottoman/Turkish history, was married to the film director Elia Kazan who was born in Istanbul.
The Dervish is a novel about Mary, a young American widow who loses her husband in the 1st world war and decides to leave America and join her sister in Istanbul, her sister's husba ...more
I'll be reading a lot of books set in Turkey this year, so I was happy to receive a copy of this through NetGalley.
The Dervish tells the story of the Allied occupation of the former Ottoman Empire between the end of the first world war and 1923, when the Republic of Turkey was formed by rebels led by Mustafa Kemal, through the eyes of Mary, an American war widow who has moved to Istanbul to be with her sister.
I think this needed to be a much longer novel to successfully accomplish everything the ...more
The Dervish tells the story of the Allied occupation of the former Ottoman Empire between the end of the first world war and 1923, when the Republic of Turkey was formed by rebels led by Mustafa Kemal, through the eyes of Mary, an American war widow who has moved to Istanbul to be with her sister.
I think this needed to be a much longer novel to successfully accomplish everything the ...more
The Dervish tells of events leading up to the creation of the Republic of Turkey through the eyes of a Western artist named Mary Di Benedetti. There are a lot of historical details mentioned in the book. Having recently taken an online course on world history, it was interesting to me to see names I recognized from my class appear as characters in this novel. The descriptions of various places in the Ottoman Empire made the setting come alive for me.
Despite this (or perhaps in a way because of i ...more
Despite this (or perhaps in a way because of i ...more
Going on with my world tour of 52 countries started last year, I just visited Turkey with The Dervish.
Once again, I got caught by the format of the book (letter, with memories) and the intensity of the historical events, so that I had to go back and check if this was fiction or nonfiction.
The story is set on the background of an essential time in Turkey history: just after World War I, with the Allies disastrous tries to cut the country into pieces, the conflict between the Turks and the Greeks ...more
Once again, I got caught by the format of the book (letter, with memories) and the intensity of the historical events, so that I had to go back and check if this was fiction or nonfiction.
The story is set on the background of an essential time in Turkey history: just after World War I, with the Allies disastrous tries to cut the country into pieces, the conflict between the Turks and the Greeks ...more
Feb 13, 2014
Hend
marked it as to-read
