Download or read book The Sultan s Seal A Novel Kamil Pasha Novels written by Jenny White and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2007-02-17 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A wonderful read…. An historical novel of the highest quality."—Iain Pears Rich in sensuous detail, this first novel brilliantly captures the political and social upheavals of the waning Ottoman Empire. The naked body of a young Englishwoman washes up in Istanbul wearing a pendant inscribed with the seal of the deposed sultan. The death resembles the murder by strangulation of another English governess, a crime that was never solved. Kamil Pasha, a magistrate in the new secular courts, sets out to find the killer, but his dispassionate belief in science and modernity is shaken by betrayal and widening danger. In a lush, mystical voice, a young Muslim woman, Jaanan, recounts her own relationships with one of the dead women and her suspected killer. Were these political murders involving the palace or crimes of personal passion? An absorbing tale that transports the reader to nineteenth-century Turkey, this novel is also a lyrical meditation on the contradictory desires of the human soul. Reading group guide included. Includes the first chapter of the next Kamil Pasha novel.
Download or read book The Sultan s Seal A Novel Kamil Pasha Novels written by Jenny White and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2007-02-17 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The body of a young Englishwoman washes up in Istanbul wearing a pendant inscribed with the seal of the deposed sultan. The death resembles the unsolved murder of another Englishwoman, ten years before. A magistrate in the new secular courts, Kamil Pasha, sets out to find the killer, but his dispassionate belief in science and modernity is shaken by betrayal and widening danger. In a mystical voice, a young Muslim woman recounts her own relationship with one of the dead women and with the suspected killer. Were these political murders involving the palace, or crimes of personal passion? Rich in sensuous detail, this novel brilliantly captures the political and social upheavals of the waning Ottoman Empire and the contradictory desires of the human soul.
Download or read book At the Breakfast Table written by Defne Suman and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2022-09-01 with total page 395 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Told from four different perspectives, At the Breakfast Table is a story of hidden histories and family secrets, from the author of The Silence of Scheherazade. Buyukada, Turkey, 2017. In the glow of a late summer morning, family gather for the 100th birthday of the famous artist Shirin Saka. It ought to be a time of fond reminiscence, looking back on a long and fruitful artistic career, on memories spanning almost a century. But the deep past is something Shirin has spent a lifetime trying to conceal. Her grandchildren, Nur and Fikret, and great-grandchild, Celine, do not know what she's hiding, though they are intimately aware of the secret's psychological consequences. The siblings invite family friend and investigative journalist Burak along to interview Shirin – in celebration of her centenary, and also in the hope of persuading her to open up. Eventually Shirin begins to express her pain the only way she knows how. She paints a story onto her dining room wall, revealing a history wiped from public consciousness and generations of her family's history. 'Fiercely intelligent, finely textured and achingly beautiful.' Elif Shafak
Download or read book Islamist Mobilization in Turkey written by Jenny White and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2011-06-01 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the William A. Douglass Prize in Europeanist Anthropology The emergence of an Islamist movement and the startling buoyancy of Islamic political parties in Turkey--a model of secular modernization, a cosmopolitan frontier, and NATO ally--has puzzled Western observers. As the appeal of the Islamist Welfare Party spread through Turkish society, including the middle class, in the 1990s, the party won numerous local elections and became one of the largest parties represented in parliament, even holding the prime ministership in 1996 and 1997. Welfare was formally banned and closed in 1998, and its successor, Virtue, was banned in 2001, for allegedly posing a threat to the state, but the Islamist movement continues to grow in popularity. Jenny White has produced an ethnography of contemporary Istanbul that charts the success of Islamist mobilization through the eyes of ordinary people. Drawing on neighborhood interviews gathered over twenty years of fieldwork, she focuses intently on the genesis and continuing appeal of Islamic politics in the fabric of Turkish society and among mobilizing and mobilized elites, women, and educated populations. White shows how everyday concerns and interpersonal relations, rather than Islamic dogma, helped Welfare gain access to community networks, building on continuing face-to-face relationships by way of interactions with constituents through trusted neighbors. She argues that Islamic political networks are based on cultural understandings of relationships, duties, and trust. She also illustrates how Islamic activists have sustained cohesion despite contradictory agendas and beliefs, and how civic organizations, through local relationships, have ensured the autonomy of these networks from the national political organizations in whose service they appear to act. To illuminate the local culture of Istanbul, White has interviewed residents, activists, party officials, and municipal administrators and participated in their activities. She draws on rich experiences and research made possible by years of firsthand observation in the streets and homes of Umraniye, a large neighborhood that grew in tandem with Turkey’s modernization in the late 20th century. This book will appeal to anthropologists, sociologists, historians, and analysts of Islamic and Middle Eastern politics.
Download or read book The Book of the Sultan s Seal written by Youssef Rakha and published by Interlink Books. This book was released on 2015-03-06 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A PROFOUNDLY ORIGINAL DEBUT FROM HIGHLY ACCLAIMED EGYPTIAN WRITER Youssef Rakha’s extraordinary The Book of the Sultan’s Seal was published less than two weeks after then Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak stepped down, following mass protests, in February 2011. It’s hard to imagine a debut novel of greater urgency or more thrilling innovation. Modeled on a medieval Arabic manuscript in the form of a letter addressed to the writer’s friend, The Book of the Sultan’s Seal is made up of nine chapters, each centered on a drive our hero, Mustafa Çorbaci, takes around greater Cairo in the spring of 2007. Together these create a portrait of Cairo, city of post-9/11 Islam. In a series of dreams and visions, Mustafa Çorbaci encounters the spirit of the last Ottoman sultan and embarks on a mission the sultan assigns him. Çorbaci’s trials shed light on the contemporary Arab Muslim’s desperation for a sense of identity: Sultan’s Seal is both a suspenseful, erotic, riotous novel and an examination of accounts of Muslim demise. The way to a renaissance, Çorbaci’s journeys lead us to see, may have less to do with dogma and jihad than with love poetry, calligraphy, and the cultural diversity and richness within Islam. With his first novel, Rakha has created a language truly all his own—an achievement that has earned international acclaim. This profoundly original work both retells canonical Arabic classics and offers a new version of “middle Arabic,” in which the formal meets the vernacular. Now finally in English, in Paul Starkey’s masterful translation, The Book of the Sultan’s Seal will astonish new readers around the world.
Download or read book The Abyssinian Proof A Kamil Pasha Novel Kamil Pasha Novels written by Jenny White and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2009-03-16 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "An immensely enjoyable read, richly textured and wonderfully atmospheric."—Sarah Graves Constantinople, May 1453. In the dying days of the Byzantine Empire, Isaak Metochites and his family are entrusted with a silver reliquary carved with the figure of a weeping angel and the inscription: Behold the Proof of Chora, Container of the Uncontainable. Four hundred years later, magistrate Kamil Pasha is plagued by thefts of antiquities from mosques and churches and a series of murders in which the bodies bear the same distinctive mark. Sources lead Kamil to a hidden sect descended from Abyssinian slaves living in an abandoned cistern in Istanbul's gritty underworld. The reemergence of the forgotten reliquary sets off a brutal race between those sworn to protect it and those who will stop at nothing to gain its explosive secret.
Download or read book The Readers Advisory Guide to Historical Fiction written by Jennifer S. Baker and published by American Library Association. This book was released on 2015 with total page 495 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Whether set in ancient Egypt, Feudal Japan, the Victorian Age, or Civil War-era America, historical fiction places readers squarely at the center of fascinating times and places, making it one of the most popular genres in contemporary publishing. The definitive resource for librarians and other book professionals, this guideProvides an overview of historical fiction’s roots, highlighting foundational classics, and explores the genre in terms of its scope and styleCovers the latest and most popular authors and titlesDiscusses appeal characteristics and shows how librarians can use a reader's favorite qualities to make suggestionsIncludes lists of recommendations, with a compendium of print and web-based resourcesOffers marketing tips for getting the word out to readersEmphasizing an appreciation of historical fiction in its many forms and focusing on what fans enjoy, this guide provides a fresh take on a durable genre.
Download or read book Turkish Kaleidoscope written by Jenny White and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-05-04 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A powerful graphic novel that traces Turkey's descent into political violence in the 1970s through the experiences of four students on opposing sides of the conflict Turkish Kaleidoscope tells the stories of four unforgettable protagonists as they navigate a society torn apart by violent political factions. It is 1975 and Turkey is on the verge of civil war. Faruk and Orhan are from conservative shopkeeping families in eastern Anatolia that share a sense of new possibilities. Nuray is the daughter of villagers who have migrated to the provincial city where Yunus, the son of an imprisoned teacher, was raised in genteel poverty. While attending medical school in Ankara, Faruk draws a reluctant Orhan into a right-wing nationalist group while Nuray and Yunus join the left. Against a backdrop of escalating violence, the four students fall in love, have their hearts broken, get married, raise families, and struggle to get on with their lives. But the consequences of their decisions will follow them through their lives as their children begin the story anew, skewed through the kaleidoscope of historical events. Inspired by Jenny White's own experiences as a student in Turkey during this tumultuous period as well as original oral histories of Turks who lived through it, Turkish Kaleidoscope reveals how violent factionalism has its own emotional and cultural logic that defies ideological explanations.
Download or read book Natural Disasters in the Ottoman Empire written by Yaron Ayalon and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Yaron Ayalon explores the Ottoman Empire's history of natural disasters and its responses on a state, communal, and individual level.
Download or read book Muslim Nationalism and the New Turks written by Jenny Barbara White and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Turkey has leapt to international prominence as an economic and political powerhouse under its elected Muslim government, and is looked on by many as a model for other Muslim countries in the wake of the Arab Spring. This book reveals how Turkish national identity and the meanings of Islam and secularism have undergone radical changes in today's Turkey, and asks whether the Turkish model should be viewed as a success story or cautionary tale. Jenny White shows how Turkey's Muslim elites have mounted a powerful political and economic challenge to the country's secularists, developing an alternative definition of the nation based on a nostalgic revival of Turkey's Ottoman past. These Muslim nationalists have pushed aside the Republican ideal of a nation defined by purity of blood, language, and culture. They see no contradiction in pious Muslims running a secular state, and increasingly express their Muslim identity through participation in economic networks and a lifestyle of Islamic fashion and leisure. For many younger Turks, religious and national identities, like commodities, have become objects of choice and forms of personal expression. This provocative book traces how Muslim nationalists blur the line between the secular and the Islamic, supporting globalization and political liberalism, yet remaining mired in authoritarianism, intolerance, and cultural norms hostile to minorities and women.
Download or read book Life after the Harem written by Betül İpşirli Argit and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-10-29 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first study exploring the lives of female slaves of the Ottoman imperial court, drawing from hitherto unexplored primary sources
Download or read book The Abyssinian Proof written by Jenny Barbara White and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2008 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nineteenth-century Istanbul thrills in this page-turner about a conspiracy to steal an ancient reliquary whose secret could change the world.
Download or read book Three Centuries Family Chronicles of Turkey and Egypt written by Emine Foat Tugay and published by Greenwood. This book was released on 1974 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author was the second wife of Sultan Hussein Kamel of Egypt. After her husband ascended the throne in 1914, she became known as Sultana Melek. Born in Istanbul in 1869, she was a Circassian, but unlike many Circassians in the Ottoman era, she was not a slave. Her mother was Princess Nimet Mouhtar. This book describes her family's history and her own life, and gives a window into the life among the upper classes during the Ottoman Empire from the nineteenth to early twentieth centuries.
Download or read book Islam Literature and Society in Mongol Anatolia written by A. C. S. Peacock and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-10-17 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new understanding of the transformation of Anatolia to a Muslim society in the thirteenth-fourteenth centuries based on previously unpublished sources.
Download or read book The Cambridge History of the Kurds written by Hamit Bozarslan and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-04-22 with total page 1027 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Cambridge History of the Kurds is an authoritative and comprehensive volume exploring the social, political and economic features, forces and evolution amongst the Kurds, and in the region known as Kurdistan, from the fifteenth to the twenty-first century. Written in a clear and accessible style by leading scholars in the field, the chapters survey key issues and themes vital to any understanding of the Kurds and Kurdistan including Kurdish language; Kurdish art, culture and literature; Kurdistan in the age of empires; political, social and religious movements in Kurdistan; and domestic political developments in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Other chapters on gender, diaspora, political economy, tribes, cinema and folklore offer fresh perspectives on the Kurds and Kurdistan as well as neatly meeting an exigent need in Middle Eastern studies. Situating contemporary developments taking place in Kurdish-majority regions within broader histories of the region, it forms a definitive survey of the history of the Kurds and Kurdistan.
Download or read book Encyclopedia of the Ottoman Empire written by Ga ́bor A ́goston and published by Infobase Publishing. This book was released on 2010-05-21 with total page 689 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents a comprehensive A-to-Z reference to the empire that once encompassed large parts of the modern-day Middle East, North Africa, and southeastern Europe.
Download or read book The Topkapi Scroll written by Gülru Necipoğlu and published by Getty Publications. This book was released on 1996-03-01 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since precious few architectural drawings and no theoretical treatises on architecture remain from the premodern Islamic world, the Timurid pattern scroll in the collection of the Topkapi Palace Museum Library is an exceedingly rich and valuable source of information. In the course of her in-depth analysis of this scroll dating from the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century, Gülru Necipoğlu throws new light on the conceptualization, recording, and transmission of architectural design in the Islamic world between the tenth and sixteenth centuries. Her text has particularly far-reaching implications for recent discussions on vision, subjectivity, and the semiotics of abstract representation. She also compares the Islamic understanding of geometry with that found in medieval Western art, making this book particularly valuable for all historians and critics of architecture. The scroll, with its 114 individual geometric patterns for wall surfaces and vaulting, is reproduced entirely in color in this elegant, large-format volume. An extensive catalogue includes illustrations showing the underlying geometries (in the form of incised “dead” drawings) from which the individual patterns are generated. An essay by Mohammad al-Asad discusses the geometry of the muqarnas and demonstrates by means of CAD drawings how one of the scroll’s patterns could be used co design a three-dimensional vault.
