“When you kids go to the toilet, you clean yourselves with your left hands, no? Therefore, the left hand is your dirty hand. Whereas your writing needs to be clean, pure, immaculate.”
Seeing how badly I struggled and suffered in silence, the same teacher pulled me aside one day and advised me to send my left hand into “exile”. It was the first time I had heard the word. Hence throughout my primary school years, I tried to keep my left hand, my shameful and sinful hand, under the desk, unseen, unwanted—though, of course, it always re-emerged, refusing to be subjugated. I thus learned that the more you repress something, the stronger it comes back. To this day, my two hands still feel utterly uncoordinated and I find it very difficult to write anything longhand.
A few years later, my mother graduated from university and became a diplomat. The two of us moved to Madrid, Spain. From the irrational, religious and equally claustrophobic and magical neighbourhood in Ankara, I was zoomed into this posh international school attended by the children of diplomats, bureaucrats and expats. Extremely introverted and timid, once again feeling like an outsider, I retreated into myself like a turtle hiding in her shell. Except my shell was made of books.
I began reading in Spanish—The Life of Lazarillo de Tormes, His Fortunes and Adversities left a deep impression on my soul. From a sturdy, blond Dutch boy who had the habit of bullying unpopular kids like myself and already had a list of nicknames in store for me, I learned that Turks had chopped off the left hand of Cervantes. Luckily, he was right-handed. Who was this Cervantes, I wondered. The day I discovered Don Quixote was a most glorious day: here were an indomitable will to adventure and individuality, a relentless imagination, an unlikely, almost ridiculous hero, and that sad old gap between the real and the possible. It all resonated with me. English, at the time, was the third language in my life but I fell in love with it fast and hard. Charles Dickens, Enid Blyton, Roald Dahl, Oscar Wilde, and then one day, Jane Austen.
In my early twenties I arrived in Istanbul, believing with all my heart that the city was calling me. Tiny serpentine streets with crazy graffiti, layers of history, a beguiling combination of smells and sounds, an urban magnet of collective amnesia and personal stories that were waiting to be told. And bookshops. How I loved them.
My favourite shops were around the Istiklal Avenue close to the Taksim Square. One of them was Simurg, named after the mythical bird that lived in the Tree of Knowledge—the staff were always friendly and kind but they also let you peruse as much as you wanted. Piles of books, little stools to sit on, many of which were occupied by cats of all colours. They would watch the customers, their eyes narrowed down to slits. Another store was Robinson Crusoe, which stocked such a wide range of titles, from travel books to art history, that you could spend hours in here without realizing it. As a curious and somewhat disoriented reader, I would purchase whatever drew my attention, both in English and in Turkish. The classics of British, French, Russian and South American literature; contemporary American, Scandinavian, Italian authors; Sufi and Jewish mystics; Persian and Indian poets; cultural history; German political philosophy; Greek poets and writers—beloved Kavafis and Kazancakis.
Then, once a week, I would hop onto the ferry and cross to the Asian side of the city. In Kadikoy, I had two other cherished bookshops. These were very different from the ones on the European side of the city. They were much more messy, for instance, the aisles cluttered with all kinds of miscellaneous articles, a chaotic jumble. Heavy metal posters, badges of Turkish and European rock bands, handbags with feminist symbols, mugs with leftist poems, notebooks with environmentalist slogans…
From the small, dingy teahouses nearby, you could grab a cup of linden tea or strong coffee, then light a cigarette and keep looking at the books or even finish reading them. Nobody would mind if you smoked inside these bohemian bookshops. Hence the smells of tobacco, coffee and linden mixed with the smells of books. It is a wonder that we didn’t burn the place down. The staff—young men, and a few women, who always wore black T-shirts and were often high on weed—couldn’t care less what the customers did, so long as they did not steal. Anything and everything that was counter-culture was lumped together in an astonishing mixture and scattered amongst the books on sale. It was pure confusion. And confusion was, and still is, what we Turks do best.
During those years, I not only loved, adored and breathed Istanbul, but also quarrelled with the metropolis endlessly. In my novels, I wrote about its stories, yet just as much about its silences, secrets, taboos and shames. To me the city has always been a strong character in her own right, throbbing with energy, never just a colourful backdrop or mere melancholic scenery. The longer I lived here the more I was convinced that Istanbul was a she-city. Although the streets and the public squares belonged to men, especially after sunset the soul of Constantinopolis was that of a woman refusing to age.
So there I was, for a long time, back and forth on ferries, visiting the bookshops on the opposite shores of the city. I would buy literary classics and academic titles from the shops on the European side, and all my counterculture books, magazines and fanzines from the shops on the Asian side. It could have been the exact opposite, however, since the two shores of the city are not divided along clear-cut cultural lines.
The other places I visited regularly were sahaflar— second-hand bookshops. Many of these were not exactly shops, but rather ramshackle huts full of a mesmerizing range of manuscripts and miniatures and magazines, as well as forgotten—sometimes banned—publications. The clientele would be different here, somehow more serious-looking. Elderly readers could be spotted alongside university students. Silence would reign. No smoking, no heavy metal music, definitely no weed. When you opened an old Ottoman book, you could see a prayer on the first page dedicated to Kebikec—the name of the djinni that was supposed to protect books from dust and destruction.
All this time, I kept my reading lists eclectic, a patchwork of different cultures, genres and pasts. There was no order, no hierarchy, no centre. Where did the East start and where did the West end? I drew my own imaginary maps, where stories travelled freely across the boundaries of countries and continents, nations and religions. Without a care whether it was deemed “highbrow” or “lowbrow” literature, I devoured anything that intrigued me, from the Frankfurt School to Ottoman women’s magazines.
Over the years, I moved from Istanbul to Boston, Michigan to Arizona, then back to Istanbul again and, eventually, London.
But the bookshops of Istanbul, and their chaos and diversity, keep travelling with me. I carry them everywhere. Inside my head, inside my soul…
WRITERS’ BIOGRAPHIES
ALAA AL ASWANY originally trained as a dentist, and still has his own dental practice in Cairo. The Yacoubian Building was longlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 2006, has sold over one million copies worldwide, and was the bestselling novel in the Arab world for over five years. Al Aswany is also the author of Chicago (named by Newsday as the best translated novel of 2006) and Friendly Fire. His work has been translated into more than 30 languages, and published in over 100 countries. He speaks Arabic, English, French and Spanish. Al Aswany has received many awards internationally, including the Bashrahil Award for the Arabic novel, the Kafavis Award from Greece, and the Grinzane Cavour Award from Italy, and was recently named by The Times as one of the best 50 authors to have been translated into English over the last 50 years.
STEFANO BENNI is widely considered to be one of Italy’s foremost writers. His novels include Bar Sport, Terra!, The Cafe Beneath the Sea, The Company of The Celestini and Timeskipper. His trademark mix of biting social satire and magic realism has made his books national bestsellers, and they have been translated into over 20 languages. He is also the author of several volumes of essays and poetry and many collections of short stories. He lives in Rome.
MICHAEL DIRDA is a Pulitzer Prize-winning literary journalist and a weekly reviewer for the Washington Post. His own books
include a memoir, several collections of essays, and the 2012 Edgar Award-winning On Conan Doyle. In 2015 he brought out Browsings: A Year of Reading, Collecting, and Living with Books. Forthcoming is an appreciation of late 19th and early 20th century popular fiction, tentatively titled The Great Age of Storytelling.
HENRY HITCHINGS has written three books about language: Dr Johnson’s Dictionary, The Secret Life of Words and The Language Wars. He is also the author of Who’s Afraid of Jane Austen? and Sorry! The English and their Manners. He has won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and the Somerset Maugham Award, as well as the Modern Language Association’s prize for the best book by an independent scholar. Since 2009 he has been the theatre critic for the Evening Standard, and he is consultant editor of the Oxford English Dictionary.
DANIEL KEHLMANN is a novelist and playwright, born in Munich. His novels include Measuring the World, Me and Kaminski, Fame, and most recently F. He has been awarded the Candide Prize, the Kleist Prize and the Thomas Mann Prize. He lives in Berlin and New York.
ANDREY KURKOV, born in 1961, is a Ukrainian novelist who writes in Russian. He is the author of eighteen novels and seven books for children. His work has been translated into 37 languages, and he has contributed to publications including the New York Times, the Guardian, Le Monde, Die Welt and Die Zeit. He has also written extensively for the screen. He has been a member of the jury for the Man Booker International Prize, and his own awards include Ukraine’s Writer of the Year (2001) and the International Nikolai Gogol Prize (2012). He is currently vice-president of Ukrainian PEN and head of the editorial board of the weekly newspaper Culture and Life.
YIYUN LI is the author of two short story collections and two novels, and the winner, most recently, of the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award. A native of Beijing and a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she is the recipient of a 2010 MacArthur Foundation fellowship, the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award, the Whiting Writers’ Award and the Guardian First Book Award. In 2007 Granta named her one of the best American novelists under 35, and in 2010 she was named by the New Yorker as one of the twenty most important fiction writers under 40. Her work has appeared in the New Yorker, the Paris Review, A Public Space, The Best American Short Stories, and The O. Henry Prize Stories. She teaches writing at the University of California, Davis, and lives in Oakland, California.
PANKAJ MISHRA is the author of several books, including The Romantics: A Novel and From the Ruins of Empire: The Revolt against the West and the Remaking of Asia. He writes political and literary essays for the Guardian, the New Yorker, the London Review of Books and the New York Review of Books, and is a columnist for Bloomberg View and the New York Times Book Review.
DORTHE NORS was born in 1970 in Herning, Denmark and currently lives in Jutland. She holds a degree in literature and art history from the University of Aarhus. In addition to her short story collection Karate Chop, she has published two novellas and five novels. Her short stories have appeared in Harper’s Magazine, Boston Review, AGNI, A Public Space, Guernica and the Guardian. She is the first Danish writer to have a story published in the New Yorker. In 2011, she was awarded the Danish Arts Agency’s Three Year Grant for “her unusual and extraordinary talent”. In 2014, Karate Chop won the P.O. Enquist Literary Prize, and Publishers Weekly acclaimed it as one of the best books published in the US in 2014. Her latest book Mirror, Shoulder, Signal will be published by Pushkin Press in 2017.
YVONNE ADHIAMBO OWUOR was born in Kenya. She won the 2003 Caine Prize for African Writing and is a past recipient of a Chevening Scholarship and an Iowa Writer’s Fellowship. Her story “The Knife Grinder’s Tale” was adapted into an award-winning short film. From 2003 to 2005, she was the Executive Director of the Zanzibar International Film Festival. She has also been a TEDx Nairobi speaker and a Lannan Foundation resident. Her debut novel Dust was shortlisted for the Folio Prize 2015 and the FT/Oppenheimer Emerging Voices award.
IAN SANSOM is a novelist, journalist and broadcaster. He is the author of the Mobile Library series of novels. His non-fiction includes The Truth About Babies and Paper: An Elegy. His most recent book is Westmorland Alone (2016), novel number 3 in his 44 book series, The County Guides.
ELIF SHAFAK is Turkey’s most-read woman writer and an award-winning novelist. She is also a public speaker, a political commentator and an activist for women’s rights and freedom of speech. She writes in English and in Turkish. Her fourteen books, nine of which are novels, include The Bastard of Istanbul, The Forty Rules of Love, Honour, The Architect’s Apprentice and the memoir Black Milk. Her work, which has been translated into 42 languages, blends Western and Eastern traditions of storytelling. Bringing out the voices of women, minorities, subcultures, immigrants and global souls, it reflects a strong interest in history, philosophy, mysticism, Sufism and gender equality.
IAIN SINCLAIR has lived in (and written about) Hackney, East London, since 1969. His novels include Downriver (Winner of the James Tait Black Prize and the Encore Prize for the Year’s Best Second Novel), Radon Daughters, Landor’s Tower and Dining on Stones (which was shortlisted for the Ondaatje prize). Non-fiction books, exploring the myth and matter of London, include Lights Out for the Territory, London Orbital and Edge of the Orison. In the 1990s Sinclair wrote and presented a number of films for BBC2’s Late Show. He has subsequently co-directed with Chris Petit four documentaries for Channel 4; one of these, Asylum, won the short film prize at the Montreal Festival. He edited London, City of Disappearances, which was published in 2006. Since then he has published Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire (2009), Ghost Milk (2011) and American Smoke (2013). His account of a one-day walk around the orbital railway—London Overground—was published in 2015.
ALI SMITH was born in Inverness in 1962 and lives in Cambridge. Her novels include Hotel World, The Accidental and There but for the. She has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize three times, most recently for How to be both (2014), which won the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction and the Costa Novel Award. She has published five collections of short stories, most recently Public Library and other stories in 2015.
SAŠA STANIŠIĆ once hit the bull’s-eye when he was shooting, and never again. That was in Višegrad, in former Yugoslavia. There was a sofa in his parents’ apartment, with a box beside it where his books were kept, a lot of them all mixed up together. He often lay there among the books, reading. Today he would sometimes like to be that child again—a child whose world consisted of other worlds in which he occasionally fell asleep with his mind at ease.
JUAN GABRIEL VÁSQUEZ was born in Bogotá in 1973. He is the author of a book of stories, The All Saints’ Day Lovers, and five novels: The Informers, The Secret History of Costaguana, The Sound of Things Falling (winner of the Alfaguara prize in Spain and the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award), Reputations (winner of the Premio Real Academia Española and the Prémio Casa de América de Lisboa), and the forthcoming La forma de las ruinas. He is the recipient of the Prix Roger Caillois, previously awarded to writers such as Mario Vargas Llosa and Roberto Bolaño. He has translated works by E. M. Forster and Victor Hugo, among others, into Spanish. His books are published in 28 languages worldwide.
TRANSLATORS’ BIOGRAPHIES
ANTHEA BELL, born 1936, daughter of writer Adrian Bell, was educated at Talbot Heath School, Bournemouth and the University of Oxford. She has two sons and twin granddaughters. She has worked for many years as a freelance translator from German and French. Her translations include works of non-fiction; modern literary and popular fiction; books for young people including (originally with co-translator Derek Hockridge) the Asterix the Gaul strip cartoon series; and classics by E.T.A. Hoffmann, Freud, Kafka and Stefan Zweig. She has won several translation awards, was appointed OBE in 2010, and was recently awarded the Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.
ROSS BENJAMIN is a literary translator living in Nyack, New York. He received a 2015 Guggenheim Fellowship for his wor
k on Franz Kafka’s Diaries, to be published by Liveright/Norton. His previous translations include Friedrich Hölderlin’s Hyperion, Kevin Vennemann’s Close to Jedenew, Joseph Roth’s Job, Thomas Pletzinger’s Funeral for a Dog, and Clemens J. Setz’s Indigo. He was awarded the 2010 Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator’s Prize for his rendering of Michael Maar’s Speak, Nabokov and a 2012 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. He was a 2003–2004 Fulbright Scholar in Berlin.
HOWARD CURTIS was born in London, and has translated more than a hundred books from French, Italian and Spanish. He now lives in Norwich, where his favourite bookshop is the wonderful Book Hive.
AMANDA LOVE DARRAGH has spent most of her working life buying, selling, translating and editing books, journals and other texts in Moscow, London and Devon. A librarian at heart, she loves sharing books with her three children (though wishes they would put them back in the right place) and has an apparently incurable cookbook addiction. Amanda won the Rossica Translation Prize in 2009. She has been translating the work of Andrey Kurkov since 2010.
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