In The Spotlight
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Book Review
An Ottoman Traveller, Evliya Çelebi – Dankoff & Kim, trans. ed.
Undoubtedly, the most amazing parts of Dankoff and Kim’s volume are Çelebi’s accounts of the late medieval Europe. It is written with an incredible degree of confidence, bordering on arrogance, of a devout Muslim. -
Book Review
Books on the Making of the Modern Middle East – Rogan, McMeekin, Hardy, Wheatcroft
We are now witnessing a harvest of new history books on the making of the modern Middle East. Four are chosen for a critical review below. They are works by experts, well-researched, and highly readable and infinitely more obje... -
Book Review
Ferdydurke – Witold Gombrowicz
A novel about the debilitating influence of convention could hardly be a conventional novel. It is idiosyncratic to the point of an obsession. It novel illustrates that behind the scrambled surface a profound artistic and philo... -
Book Review
Pnin – Vladimir Nabokov
Nabokov's Professor Pnin is a comic character who is employed at an American college in the 1950's. The protagonist struggles to maintain his dignity throughout the narrative when surrounded by academic conspiracies that threat... -
Book Review
Invisible Man – Ralph Ellison
Invisible Man is not merely a work about an alienated African American in post war society, it is also the story of American history, and the racism that has been ever present on the surface and veiled beneath the harmless guis... -
Book Review
Libra – Don DeLillo
Libra (1988) is a novel written by Don DeLillo. It focuses on the life of Lee Harvey Oswald and offers a speculative account of the events that shaped the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. -
Book Review
The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz – Mordecai Richler
There's no doubt Duddy was destined to make it in life, since he got the will and the drive to work hard, and he's smart as hell. But he misses every chance to be happy and by the end the result is a disaster. -
Book Review
The Hidden Force – Louis Couperus
The Hidden Force is a 1900 novel by the Dutch writer Louis Couperus. The narrative is set on the island of Java in the Dutch East Indies. -
Book Review
The War of the End of the World – Mario Vargas Llosa
Most of the people in Canudos are either outcasts or extremely poor. They have nothing to lose. The Counselor for the first time in their lives gives them the feeling that they are human, that they matter, that their lives can ... -
Book Review
Black Dogs – Ian McEwan
Black Dogs is a 1992 novel by the British author Ian McEwan. It concerns the aftermath of the Nazi era in Europe, and how the fall of the Berlin Wall in the late 1980s affected those who once saw Communism as a way forward for ...
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Book Review
An Ottoman Traveller, Evliya Çelebi – Dankoff & Kim, trans. ed.
Undoubtedly, the most amazing parts of Dankoff and Kim’s volume are Çelebi’s accounts of the late medieval Europe. It is written with an incredible degree of confidence, bordering on arrogance, of a devout Muslim. -
Book Review
Books on the Making of the Modern Middle East – Rogan, McMeekin, Hardy, Wheatcroft
We are now witnessing a harvest of new history books on the making of the modern Middle East. Four are chosen for a critical review below. They are works by experts, well-researched, and highly readable and infinitely more obje... -
Book Review
Ferdydurke – Witold Gombrowicz
A novel about the debilitating influence of convention could hardly be a conventional novel. It is idiosyncratic to the point of an obsession. It novel illustrates that behind the scrambled surface a profound artistic and philo... -
Book Review
Pnin – Vladimir Nabokov
Nabokov's Professor Pnin is a comic character who is employed at an American college in the 1950's. The protagonist struggles to maintain his dignity throughout the narrative when surrounded by academic conspiracies that threat... -
Book Review
Invisible Man – Ralph Ellison
Invisible Man is not merely a work about an alienated African American in post war society, it is also the story of American history, and the racism that has been ever present on the surface and veiled beneath the harmless guis... -
Book Review
Libra – Don DeLillo
Libra (1988) is a novel written by Don DeLillo. It focuses on the life of Lee Harvey Oswald and offers a speculative account of the events that shaped the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. -
Book Review
The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz – Mordecai Richler
There's no doubt Duddy was destined to make it in life, since he got the will and the drive to work hard, and he's smart as hell. But he misses every chance to be happy and by the end the result is a disaster. -
Book Review
The Hidden Force – Louis Couperus
The Hidden Force is a 1900 novel by the Dutch writer Louis Couperus. The narrative is set on the island of Java in the Dutch East Indies. -
Book Review
The War of the End of the World – Mario Vargas Llosa
Most of the people in Canudos are either outcasts or extremely poor. They have nothing to lose. The Counselor for the first time in their lives gives them the feeling that they are human, that they matter, that their lives can ... -
Book Review
Black Dogs – Ian McEwan
Black Dogs is a 1992 novel by the British author Ian McEwan. It concerns the aftermath of the Nazi era in Europe, and how the fall of the Berlin Wall in the late 1980s affected those who once saw Communism as a way forward for ...
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Book Reviews
Season of Migration to the North – Tayeb Salih
"This appropriation and internalization of Western discourse exposes the power dynamics inherent to categories of difference." - Justin D. Edwards
Video reviews
Books Worth Reading: Sapiens – A Brief History of Humankind – Yuval Noah Harari
Bora is the director of an information management & technology company. He lives in the UK.
Cafe reviews
Plus Kitchen, Istanbul
Our new find is the Plus Kitchen Café in Akasya Shopping Mall (on the Anatolian side of Istanbul), a relatively new addition to Istanbul’s ever growing shopping malls. Founders of Plus Kitchen Cafés promise an environmentally ...
Indulge
Nasreddin Hodja Stories
Nasreddin Hodja, Shrewd and Silly Nasreddin Hodja (Hoca) is a 13th century Turkish personage who is believed to have lived in Akşehir in south-central Turkey. About 400 handwritten manuscripts that narrate anecdotes demonstrati...
