Description
Longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award
This gorgeous, haunting saga tells the story of modern Turkey and its diverse communities through the life of a gravestone maker.
In the city of Mardin, near Turkey’s border with Syria, the orphaned Avdo finds purpose when an old mason takes him on as an apprentice. From Master Josef, he learns the importance of their art, which looks after the dead and bears witness to their lives. Avdo then travels the country and meets a woman he loves wholeheartedly, only to lose her through a tragic crime. Resigned to a lonely existence, he retreats from the world into his cemetery workshop, but even there, life, with all its sorrows, joys, injustices, and gifts, draws him in unexpected directions.
An intimate, indelible epic, Stone and Shadow melds fragments not only from twentieth-century Turkish history, but also from the Ottoman Empire, the wider Middle East, and Europe. Together they form a breathtaking picture of a rich, complex society that encompasses Christians, Sunni Muslims, Alawites, Turks, Kurds, and Armenians.
About the Author
Sait Faik’s career marked a pivotal moment in Turkish culture in the 1930s and 40s when the secular, post-Ottoman sensibility placed new demands on the writing of literature. Born in Adapazari in 1906, Sait Faik is regarded by Turkish critics and readers as their finest short story writer – a Turkish Chekhov.
Alex Dawe has translated Tanpinar's The Time Regulation Institute, for which he won a PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant.
Maureen Freely is a writer, translator, senior lecturer at Warwick University, and the former president of English PEN. The translator of books by Orhan Pamuk and Fethiye Cetin, she actively champions free expression. She has been a regular contributor to The Guardian, The Observer, The Independent, and The Sunday Times for two decades. Her translation of Sevgi Soysal’s Dawn is forthcoming from Archipelago.
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