"The Bastard of Istanbul" by Elif Shafak
(Penguin, 9780143112716, $14.00)
New in paperback this week, "The Bastard of Istanbul" by Turkish novelist
Elif Shafak tells the story of a colorful Istanbul family whose members,
both gathered and strewn, eccentric and staid, struggle to reconcile
themselves to the spotty history that has delivered them all here, together,
and which threatens to hold them apart.
The bastard of the book's title is Asya Kazanci, a 19-year-old woman raised
amongst three generations of aunties and other huddled female relatives (Kazanci
men, you see, have a habit of dying young or emigrating). Asya's tale
inter-grows with those of her many kin in a rambling garden of tales set
amid sparkling descriptions of Istanbul--up until a new and surprising plant
sprouts in their midst: 21-year-old Armanoush, the Armenian-American
stepdaughter of Asya's long-gone uncle Mustapha, arrives in Istanbul looking
for her roots and there finds the Kazanci clan.
Though "Amy," as Armanoush is called, grew up hearing stories of the
Armenian genocide of World War I, her new Turkish relations have all but
expunged it and their culpability from their collective memory. For all
but Asya, Amy's presence is seen as a disruptive spade digging into the very
corners they would most like left undisturbed. But family, like nature,
abhors a vacuum, and so Armanoush and her returned stepfather are folded
back into the mix, forever changing the contours of the Kazancis.
There's a bedrock layer of politics and history to this novel, but atop it
is a rich, loamy story of family bonds and oddball relatives (Auntie Banu
with her clairvoyant visions, Auntie Feride, whose slide from sanity is
reflected in her changing hair color). When it was first published in Turkey
more than a year ago, Shafak's novel met resistance from hard-line
nationalists, who, like a humorless version of Asya's family, sought to deny
the reality of the country's treatment of Armenians and so attempted to
prosecute Shafak for assaulting "Turkishness" itself. Even so, "The Bastard
of Istanbul" remained Turkey's bestselling book of 2006, and all charges
against Shafak were ultimately dismissed.
Politics aside, Shafak's novel beautifully explores the persistent nature of
memory and the resilience of family bonds; it shows that in our choices and
in our kinships, "The past is anything but bygone"--indeed, its chief
quality is that it is with us always, just like the future. And at its
heart, Amy and Asya's story urges respect for the permanence of the former
while asking allowances for all the fabulous malleability of the
latter.
Review by
Mark David Bradshaw, January
31, 2008
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