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    Like a Sword Wound
    Like a Sword Wound
    Like a Sword Wound
    Ebook386 pages6 hours

    Like a Sword Wound

    By Ahmet Altan

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    A “magical, marvellous” epic of an empire in collapse: Book one in the acclaimed Ottoman Quartet by the award-winning Turkish author and political dissident (La Stampa, Italy).

    Tracking the decline and fall of the Ottoman empire, Ahmet Altan’s Ottoman Quartet spans fifty years from the end of the nineteenth century to the post-WWI rise of Atatu¨rk as leader of the new Turkey. In Like a Sword Wound, a modern-day resident of Istanbul is visited by the ghosts of his ancestors, finally free to tell their stories “under the broad, dark wings of death.”

    Among the characters who come to life are an Ottoman army officer; the Sultan’s personal doctor; a scion of the royal house whose Western education brings him into conflict with his family’s legacy; and a beguiling Turkish aristocrat who, while fond of her emancipated life in Paris, finds herself drawn to a conservative Muslim spiritual leader. As their stories of intimate desire and personal betrayal unfold, the society that spawned them is transforming and the sublime empire disintegrating.

    Here is a Turkish saga reminiscent of War and Peace, written in lively, contemporary prose that traces not only the social currents of the time but also the erotic and emotional lives of its characters.

    “An engrossing novel of obsessive love and oppressive tyranny, a tale of collapse that dramatizes the fateful moments of an empire and its subjects.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateOct 9, 2018
    ISBN9781609454753
    Like a Sword Wound
    Author

    Ahmet Altan

    Born in 1950, AHMET ALTAN became a journalist before publishing his first novel at age 27, Four Seasons of Autumn, which won the Grand Award of the Akademi Publishing House. His second novel, Trace on the Water, was banned due to obscenity and later published as Dangerous Tales, which sold over 200,000 copies. Like a Sword Wound, published in 1998, won the Yunus Nadi Novel Prize, its sales surpassing 500,000 copies. In 2009, along with Roberto Saviano, Altan was awarded the prestigious Prize for the Freedom and Future of the Media by the Media Foundation of the Sparkasse Leipzig. In 2011, he received the International Hrant Dink Award, an award that has been presented since 2009 in the name of the assassinated Armenian journalist and author Hrant Dink. ALEXANDER DAWE was born in New York and now lives and works in Istanbul. He received a PEN translation fund to translate the collected short stories of Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar. He worked with Maureen Freely on a new translation of Tanpinar’s novel The Time Regulation Institute.

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    Reviews for Like a Sword Wound

    4/5

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    • 4/5
      Rating: 3.5* of fiveThe Publisher Says: Volume 1 of the Ottoman QuartetA powerful, beautifully written saga set during the fall of one of history’s greatest empires.Altan’s “Ottoman Quartet” spans the fifty years between the final decades of the 19th century and the post-WWI rise of Atatürk as both unchallenged leader and visionary reformer of the new Turkey.The four books in the quartet tell the gripping stories of an unforgettable cast of characters, among them: an Ottoman army officer, the Sultan’s personal doctor, a scion of the royal house whose Western education brings him into conflict with his family’s legacy, and a beguiling Turkish aristocrat who, while fond of her emancipated life in Paris, finds herself drawn to a conservative Muslim spiritual leader.Intrigue, betrayal, love, war, progress, and tradition provide a colorful backdrop against which the lives of these characters play out. All the while, the society that spawned them is transforming and the Sublime Empire disintegrating.Here is a Turkish saga reminiscent of War and Peace, written in lively, contemporary prose that traces not only the social currents of the time but also the erotic and emotional lives of its characters. The female characters in Altan’s gripping saga will upend prejudices about Turkey, the Middle East, and Muslim nations.I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.My Review: This early-20th Century-set Turkish soap opera is just about as much fun as there is to have reading. There are women with agency, there are men with Yearnings, there are Grand Historical Changes! It is just as juicy as you could wish, it is volume one of four...written by a novelist imprisoned for his liberal politics, therefore without any serious distractions...and it will appeal to any historical-fiction lover as well as those whose taste for magical realism (ghosts! Plenty o' ghosts!) is on the restrained side.I'm suggesting reading it pretty strongly, right? Mostly because I think you'll enjoy that it's a great value at $2.99 on Kindle the absolute most.
    • 3/5
      Whew! I'll take a long shower, a longer bath, a spell in the sauna and an icy plunge to wash this one off! Great if you like being drowned in poisonous honey and watch the unlovable men whinge about being unloved by women they raped as children under the guise of marriage. A profoundly misogynistic exercise in creating straw women to absorb the anger generated by the lusts and passions of a bunch of jerks. Oh, and there's Turkish politics, which is it's own cesspit! Very accomplished language, though how anyone survived translating this I can't imagine.
    • 3/5
      This is an historical fiction piece out of Turkey, about the Ottoman Empire. Organ Pamuk he's not. I think, more accurately, it is historical melodrama fitting into a medium light reading category. Intrigue, infighting, and unending lusts characterize what I read. I will be honest and say that I didn't finish it, but that is likely due to the reading mood I am in at the moment. Give it a chance.

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    Like a Sword Wound - Ahmet Altan

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