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Product Description
In October 2005, only a few months after her Turkish husband is detained and her five-year-old son distributed to a foster family by US border patrol, Jeannie Wakefield disappears. She leaves behind in Istanbul a 57-page letter to M, an anonymous investigative journalist who Jeannie begs to write about her plight. The letter tells the story of Jeannie s first arrival in Turkey 34 years earlier, when she was a bright-eyed 16-year-old innocent shimmering with open-hearted idealism. The letter reveals a convoluted tale of complex political intrigue, of retired intelligence operatives and Turkish teenage radicals willing to die for their right to speak out against the humanitarian outrages of their government, of a grisly murder and a dismembered body in a trunk. It is a grim and heartbreaking history of first loves shattered and best friends betrayed, and M finds herself, against her will, tangled in Jeannie s narrative. But in the deep state of post-911 Turkey, nobody is who they say they are, and everyone is a suspect exactly how much will M inadvertently sacrifice to save the woman who stole her only true love
Praise for Enlightenment
A dark Conradian drama, set in a beautifully illuminated Istanbul,where the past is always with us. Orhan Pamuk, Nobel Prize-winning author of Snow
A psychological thriller, a murder story, a rumination on friendship, and a political investigation. If that sounds like a lot of weight for a novel to carry, it is; and it s a testament to Freely s ability that the novel does, in large measure, succeed...Enlightenment is a fluent, evocative and uncomfortable read, deliberately so...This is a story almost impossible to summarize but hard to forget...Freely is an almost perversely original writer, sharply observing the world she knows so well and upending all one s suspicions and assumptions...A brave unflinching work of art. Washington Post Book World
Freely, who has translated Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk's recent works, possesses an exceptional command of language: her sentences are so apt, they jump out at you...In this ingenious novel about appearance and reality, it is difficult to predict what will happen next or what it means, but once you start this book, you will not put it down. Library Journal (starred review)
Complex, often riveting...The main narrative threads extracts from Jeannie s letter;Miss M s memories of Istanbul from that same period and her present-day account of investigating Jeannie s long-ago indoctrination into a Communist cell,which was at one point charged with the infamous but possibly apocryphal Trunk Murder interweave toward a quietly stunning conclusion. Both mystery/thriller and mainstream literary readers will be well rewarded. Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Byzantine in structure, mischievous in intent, it is as concerned with the garbled and provisional nature of truth as with the minutiae of repression. Times Literary Supplement
It is no secret that most Americans don t understand the complex web of social and political intricacies that define life in contemporary Turkey. Freely seeks to unravel both a mystery mired in the past and an archaic societal system that seems out of sync in the present...Freely tops off this riveting narrative of Cold War and post-9/11 Turkey with a chillingly unexpected revelation. Booklist
A complex novel juxtaposes youthful allegiances and political machinations in Turkey.U.S.-born,U.K.-based translator Freely tackles weighty themes in her long, dark, spiraling story. The novel endlessly revisits an inner circle of characters and repeatedly reinterprets the events, against a background of murky layers of political villainy. Despite its thriller-like components, this is a dense, shadowy and serious work...Conspiracy theory, nationhood and relationships collide, often obscurely, in a multi-layered and earnest tale. Kirkus Reviews
About the author
MAUREEN FREELY was born in the United States and grew up in Istanbul. She was educated at Harvard University. Perhaps best known as translator of the Nobel Prize-winning author Orhan Pamuk, she is a journalist and a professor at the University of Warwick. She lives in England.
Praise for Enlightenment
A dark Conradian drama, set in a beautifully illuminated Istanbul,where the past is always with us. Orhan Pamuk, Nobel Prize-winning author of Snow
A psychological thriller, a murder story, a rumination on friendship, and a political investigation. If that sounds like a lot of weight for a novel to carry, it is; and it s a testament to Freely s ability that the novel does, in large measure, succeed...Enlightenment is a fluent, evocative and uncomfortable read, deliberately so...This is a story almost impossible to summarize but hard to forget...Freely is an almost perversely original writer, sharply observing the world she knows so well and upending all one s suspicions and assumptions...A brave unflinching work of art. Washington Post Book World
Freely, who has translated Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk's recent works, possesses an exceptional command of language: her sentences are so apt, they jump out at you...In this ingenious novel about appearance and reality, it is difficult to predict what will happen next or what it means, but once you start this book, you will not put it down. Library Journal (starred review)
Complex, often riveting...The main narrative threads extracts from Jeannie s letter;Miss M s memories of Istanbul from that same period and her present-day account of investigating Jeannie s long-ago indoctrination into a Communist cell,which was at one point charged with the infamous but possibly apocryphal Trunk Murder interweave toward a quietly stunning conclusion. Both mystery/thriller and mainstream literary readers will be well rewarded. Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Byzantine in structure, mischievous in intent, it is as concerned with the garbled and provisional nature of truth as with the minutiae of repression. Times Literary Supplement
It is no secret that most Americans don t understand the complex web of social and political intricacies that define life in contemporary Turkey. Freely seeks to unravel both a mystery mired in the past and an archaic societal system that seems out of sync in the present...Freely tops off this riveting narrative of Cold War and post-9/11 Turkey with a chillingly unexpected revelation. Booklist
A complex novel juxtaposes youthful allegiances and political machinations in Turkey.U.S.-born,U.K.-based translator Freely tackles weighty themes in her long, dark, spiraling story. The novel endlessly revisits an inner circle of characters and repeatedly reinterprets the events, against a background of murky layers of political villainy. Despite its thriller-like components, this is a dense, shadowy and serious work...Conspiracy theory, nationhood and relationships collide, often obscurely, in a multi-layered and earnest tale. Kirkus Reviews
About the author
MAUREEN FREELY was born in the United States and grew up in Istanbul. She was educated at Harvard University. Perhaps best known as translator of the Nobel Prize-winning author Orhan Pamuk, she is a journalist and a professor at the University of Warwick. She lives in England.
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