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Istanbul Was a Fairy Tale

Mario Levi author Ender Gurol translator

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Dalkey Archive Press

Published:17th Apr '14

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Istanbul Was a Fairy Tale cover

A major work of contemporary Turkish literature, Istanbul Was a Fairy Tale tells the stories of three generations of a Jewish family from the 1920s to the 1980s. Istanbul is their only home, and yet they live in a state of alienation, isolating themselves from the world around them. As witness, observer, and protagonist, the narrator at once inside and outside of his story records their many tales, as well as those of their friends and neighbors, creating an expansive mosaic of characters, each doing their best to survive the twentieth century.

With its telescoping of time, its complex changeability of voice, its fractured and prismatic storylines, Istanbul Was a Fairy Tale clearly belongs to the extended tradition of modernism. -- Tadzio Koelb Times Literary Supplement "Highly literary, lyrical... Dense and divergent... replete with poignant, wrenching sentences." --Jewish Book Council

ISBN: 9781564787125

Dimensions: 228mm x 152mm x 43mm

Weight: 1088g

656 pages