Hasan Ali Toptas's Books

Reckless

By: Hasan Ali Toptas

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Thirty years after completing his military service, Ziya flees the spiraling turmoil and perplexing chaos of the city where he lives to seek a peaceful existence in a remote village--of which he has heard dreamlike tales. Greeted by his old friend from the army, Kenan, who has built and furnished a vineyard house for him, Ziya grows accustomed to his new surroundings and is welcomed by Kenan's family. However, the village does not provide the serenity Ziya yearns for, and old memories of his military service on the treacherous Syrian/Turkish border flood his thoughts. As he battles specters of the past, his rejection of village life provokes an undercurrent of ill feeling among the locals, not least towards Kenan, who has incurred heavy debts by his generosity to the man who may have saved his life. Toptas masterfully blurs the borders between dreams and reality, truth and memory in this gripping tale. Like Turkey itself, the writer sits between the traditions of the East and the West, creating bold new literature. In his own country he sits comfortably on the shelf beside Orhan Pamuk, and his first novel in English is poised to enchant those same readers.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

337

Publisher

Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published Date

ISBN 10

1632860627

ISBN 13

9781632860620

Shadowless

By: Hasan Ali Toptas

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Shadowless

By: Hasan Ali Toptas

A knotty, postmodern tale. The quicksilver narrative slips between dream, memory and reality ... A beguiling enigma' Financial Times 'A poetic masterpiece of world literature ... An oriental Kafka, enriched with the literary achievements of Islamic mysticism' Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung In an Anatolian village forgotten both by God and the government, the muhtar has been elected leader for the sixteenth successive year. When he staggers to bed that night, drunk on raki and his own well-deserved success, the village is prosperous. But when he is woken by his wife the next evening he discovers that Nuri, the barber, has disappeared without a trace in the dead of night, and the community begins to fracture. In a nameless town far, far away, Nuri walks into a barbershop as if from a dream, not knowing how he has arrived. Try as he might, he cannot grasp the strands of his memory. The facts of his past life shift and evade him, and as other customers come and go, they too struggle to recall how they got there... Blurring the lines of reality to terrific effect, Shadowless is both a compelling mystery and an enduring evocation of displacement from one of the finest, most exciting voices in Turkish literature today.

Average ratings

N/A