Literary Fiction

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The Silence of Scheherazade

The Silence of Scheherazade

In September 1905, in the cosmopolitan Ottoman port city of Smyrna, a girl named Scheherazade is born as an Indian spy arrives with a secret mission for the British Empire. Their stories unfold alongside those of four families—a Levantine, a Greek, a Turkish, and an Armenian—whose lives are bound together by love, ambition, and the city’s extraordinary cultural diversity. Over the following seventeen years, the families navigate political upheaval, shifting loyalties, forbidden relationships, and the growing tensions surrounding the decline of the Ottoman Empire. As war transforms the region, the world they know begins to crumble, culminating in the devastating fire that engulfs Smyrna in 1922. Rich in historical detail and intimate human drama, The Silence of Scheherazade resurrects a lost multicultural world and gives voice to the people caught between competing nationalisms. It is a story of love, displacement, and the silences that history leaves behind.

At the Breakfast Table

At the Breakfast Table

On Büyükada, an island off Istanbul, relatives gather in the summer of 2017 to celebrate the hundredth birthday of Şirin Saka, a celebrated artist whose long life has spanned nearly a century of political and cultural change. What should be a joyful family occasion soon becomes an encounter with the past, as the younger generations begin to question the silences that have shaped their lives. Şirin’s grandchildren, Nur and Fikret, and her great-granddaughter, Selin, know that something painful lies beneath the family’s carefully maintained image. Hoping to uncover the truth, they invite Burak, a family friend and investigative journalist, to interview Şirin. But the elderly artist has spent decades concealing a history that reaches beyond her personal life into the suppressed memories of the country itself. Told through four perspectives, At the Breakfast Table explores the inheritance of family secrets, the psychological cost of silence, and the courage required to confront uncomfortable truths. Defne Suman weaves together intimate family drama and Turkey’s complicated history in a novel about memory, identity, and the possibility of breaking free from the past.

Three Daughters of Eve

Three Daughters of Eve

Three Daughters of Eve follows Peri, a wealthy Turkish woman whose apparently comfortable life in Istanbul conceals unresolved questions about faith, identity, and personal responsibility. During a dinner party years after her university studies at Oxford, a photograph unexpectedly brings back memories of her time there in the 1990s. As a student, Peri became involved with a charismatic professor who encouraged his pupils to debate religion and belief. Her friendships with two fellow students—one deeply religious and the other firmly atheist—exposed her to conflicting ideas about spirituality, feminism, and freedom. Their relationships eventually culminated in an incident that Peri has struggled to understand ever since. Shafak explores the tension between faith and doubt, the influence of family and culture, and the difficulty of forming an independent worldview in a politically divided society.

The Gilded Cage on the Bosphorus

The Gilded Cage on the Bosphorus

Ayşe Osmanoğlu

Istanbul, 1903. Behind the guarded walls of Çırağan Palace, former Sultan Murad V and his family have spent nearly three decades in enforced confinement, prisoners of the very dynasty they belong to. As political unrest spreads and revolution threatens the Ottoman Empire, Murad fears for the future of his children and grandchildren. He dreams of their freedom, happiness, and the chance to build lives beyond the palace walls. But dangerous political plots, assassination attempts, and family scandals threaten to destroy everything he holds dear. Drawing on the history of her own imperial family, Ayşe Osmanoğlu brings the final decades of Ottoman rule to life in a richly detailed novel about family loyalty, sacrifice, and the price of power.

Madonna in a Fur Coat

Madonna in a Fur Coat

Madonna in a Fur Coat tells the story of Raif Efendi, a quiet and seemingly unremarkable man whose inner life is revealed through a diary discovered by a colleague. The diary recounts his time in 1920s Berlin, where he meets Maria Puder, an independent and unconventional artist whose portrait captivates him. As their relationship develops, Raif experiences a profound and transformative love that challenges his understanding of himself and human connection. Through themes of loneliness, vulnerability, and emotional restraint, Sabahattin Ali portrays the tragedy of unexpressed feelings and the distance between a person’s outward appearance and inner world. The novel is a poignant reflection on love, missed opportunities, and the lasting impact of a brief but defining relationship.

Türkiye Germany 2020

Nights of Plague

Nights of Plague

In 1901, a deadly plague reaches Mingheria, a fictional island in the eastern Mediterranean and the twenty-ninth province of the declining Ottoman Empire. Home to both Muslim and Greek Orthodox communities, the island is already divided by religious tensions and political rivalries. As the epidemic spreads, the Ottoman authorities send experts to impose quarantine measures, but suspicion, resistance, and competing loyalties threaten to undermine every attempt to contain the disease. When a mysterious murder complicates the crisis, the island descends into a struggle involving religious leaders, government officials, scientists, and ordinary people desperate to survive. As the Ottoman administration loses control, the epidemic becomes a catalyst for rebellion and the emergence of a new national identity. Blending historical epic, detective story, and political satire, Nights of Plague explores how fear reshapes societies and how crises expose the fragility of authority. Through an imagined history of an Ottoman island, Pamuk examines nationalism, religious conflict, scientific reasoning, and the human tendency to choose ideology over evidence.

A Recipe for Daphne

A Recipe for Daphne

Nektaria Anastasiadou

In contemporary Istanbul, Fanis Paleologos is a charming widower and a respected member of the city’s dwindling Rum community, Greek Orthodox Christians whose families have lived in Istanbul for centuries. His quiet routines are disrupted when Daphne, an American-born woman of Greek and Ottoman heritage, arrives in search of her roots. Her presence awakens old memories of the woman Fanis once loved and lost during the devastating 1955 Istanbul pogrom. Meanwhile, Kosmas, a talented pastry chef hoping to find a suitable wife within his community, also falls for Daphne and attempts to win her heart through his culinary skills. As romantic rivalries unfold amid afternoon tea, traditional pastries, and lively neighbourhood gatherings, long-buried family secrets threaten to complicate their hopes for happiness. Blending humour, romance, and history, Nektaria Anastasiadou’s novel explores cultural identity, the meaning of home, and the resilience of a community determined to preserve its traditions despite decades of discrimination and upheaval.

The Last Apartment in Istanbul

The Last Apartment in Istanbul

Pericles Drakos has lived his entire seventy-five years in Istanbul’s elegant Circle Building, watching the city transform around him. Once home to a thriving, multicultural community, his neighbourhood has gradually changed, its old inhabitants pushed aside by political tensions and gentrification. When the COVID-19 pandemic deepens his isolation, Pericles finds an unexpected connection with Leyla, a younger woman who moves into the building and happens to be a writer. Drawn to Leyla, Pericles begins writing down the story of his life—not the version others remember, but the complicated truth of the man he once was. Through memories of love, jealousy, betrayal, and loss, he revisits the experiences of a Greek man living in Turkey, where political oppression and hostility have shaped both his personal history and his sense of belonging. Spanning decades of Istanbul’s turbulent history, The Last Apartment in Istanbul is a poignant exploration of memory, identity, and the fragile coexistence of different communities. Defne Suman brings to life a city where private lives are inseparable from public history, asking what remains of a person when the world they knew disappears.

Türkiye Greece 2022

Djinns

Every family has its secrets. Some are buried so deeply that they shape generations before anyone dares to speak them aloud. After working in Germany for thirty years, Hüseyin Yılmaz finally fulfils his dream of buying an apartment in Istanbul, hoping to spend his retirement in his homeland. But on the very day he moves in, he dies of a heart attack. His wife, Emine, and their four children travel from Germany to Turkey for his funeral, bringing with them years of resentment, unspoken grief, and unresolved questions. As the story unfolds through the perspectives of each family member, a complicated portrait emerges of a Turkish-Kurdish family navigating life between cultures. A son struggles to understand his sexuality, a daughter wrestles with conflicting identities, and a mother carries painful memories she has never shared. Beneath their everyday conflicts lie deeper wounds shaped by migration, racism, and the expectations of family. With psychological depth and haunting symbolism, Fatma Aydemir explores the invisible forces that haunt us: inherited trauma, buried memories, and the secrets that pass from one generation to the next. Djinns is a powerful family saga about the longing to be understood—and the ghosts we must confront to find freedom.

Türkiye Germany 2022

Dawn

On a hot night in Adana, southern Turkey, a gathering of friends is interrupted when police storm into a private home and arrest those suspected of opposing the government. Among them is Oya, a journalist recently released from prison and forced into exile for her left-wing political beliefs. As the detainees are interrogated, their stories unfold, revealing the fear, compromises, and quiet acts of resistance that define life under military repression. Through the experiences of workers, intellectuals, women, and even the officials enforcing the law, Sevgi Soysal exposes a society where power can turn ordinary people into both victims and perpetrators. Yet darkness does not extinguish every possibility of solidarity. With sharp humour and an unsentimental eye, Soysal explores how people preserve their dignity when their freedom is threatened. Inspired by her own experience of political imprisonment, Dawn is a powerful portrait of resistance, gender inequality, and the fragile hope that survives even in the most oppressive circumstances.

Summer Heat

In 1974, young Melike senses that something is terribly wrong. Her parents’ political gatherings have stopped, and whispered conversations about prison, invasion, and military coups fill the family home in Istanbul. Hoping to escape the growing unrest, the family moves to a quiet village in southern Turkey. For a while, life seems peaceful—until Melike’s beloved father disappears. Nearly thirty years later, Melike has built a respectable life as an art historian in Istanbul. She has a comfortable home and a devoted husband, yet a persistent dissatisfaction follows her. When she meets Petro, a mysterious and captivating stranger, she believes a new chapter is beginning. But Petro’s concealed identity forces her to confront the past she has spent years trying to leave behind. Against the backdrop of the 1974 Turkish military intervention in Cyprus and its political aftermath, Summer Heat explores family secrets, desire, and the long shadow of historical violence. It is a story about the identities we construct, the truths we bury, and the past’s power to disrupt even the most carefully arranged lives.

A Farewell To Imperial Istanbul

A Farewell To Imperial Istanbul

Ayşe Osmanoğlu

Istanbul, 1922. The Ottoman Empire is collapsing, and the imperial family faces the loss of the world they have known for centuries. As the Turkish nationalist movement brings an end to the Sultanate, Prince Nihad struggles to protect his family and preserve the legacy of a fading dynasty. His son, Prince Vâsıb, dreams of a future in which Istanbul can recover its freedom from foreign occupation. Against a backdrop of political upheaval, personal sacrifice, and a city caught between empires and a new republic, Ayşe Osmanoğlu tells a moving story of family loyalty, displacement, and the painful end of an era. Inspired by her own imperial heritage, this historical novel brings the final days of Ottoman Istanbul vividly to life.