Portrait of a Turkish Family

by Irfan Orga

Book Overview

Describes in chilling, yet affectionate, detail the disintegration of a wealthy Ottoman family, both financially and emotionally. It is rich with the scent of fin de siecle Istanbul in the last days... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 090787181X
• ISBN13: 9780907871811
• Release Date: January 1988
• Publisher: Eland
• Length: 316 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.

Customer Reviews

A warm memoire and a minor classic

"Portrait of a Turkish Family" is a memoir of the decline of old Istanbul, and of the author's once-wealthy merchant family, during the military and economic crises that followed Turkey's entry into World War I, the wars of the early 1920s, and Mustafa Kemal's (Ataturk's) nationalist revolution. The book, republished by Eland Publishing Ltd., was written originally in English and in an elegant, end-of-the-19th Century style. In the Afterword, the author's son Ates, hints that his father Irfan planned the book and wrote a sketch, but that his aristocratic English mother drafted it. This warm and tragic remembrance is a minor classic of English literature; it echoes the aching nostalgia of the British upper classes for things oriental in 1950, the evening of the British Empire. Though British in style and sentiment, the book belongs to Irfan Orga's very Turkish memories of childhood. It is his touching, often moving, evocation of the charms of a world lost forever; the world of servants, comfort, and of cloistered women and small children. Women of this social class stayed mainly at home in the Ottoman era, leaving their homes only with relatives and completely veiled. Small children were happily spoiled. This charmed if out-dated existence was destroyed by Turkey's entry into the First World War and by the succession of military reversals that followed. These brought blockade, food shortages, inflation, and repeated drafts of militarily unqualified civilians. Many died, including the author's father; who was drafted, hardly trained, and sent off with his battalion, dying en route from marching day after day on swollen, bloody, and then infected feet. The fires that periodically ravaged old Istanbul burned the family home, and most of its savings --in paper notes- were lost. The tale follows the family's quick slide into poverty and even hunger, Irfan's mother's struggle to remake her self, by acts of will, to earn money through labor, and his grandmother's incapacity to adjust to new realities. With the victory of the Mustafa Kemal's revolution, their mother places Irfan and his younger brother in officer candidate school, to avoid hunger and provide some education, and Irfan goes on to a career in military aviation and, during World War II, to a posting in Britain. What follows is sad, and according to the Afterword; although this book won recognition and sold reasonably well in Britain when it was first published, Irfan Orga fell into poverty once again. Although Orientalism is famously out of fashion, this book is worth reading for its sincerity of feeling, for its extraordinary style, and for its personal point of view on the end of Ottoman Turkey. For an alternative point of view on Old Istanbul, this time of the 50s and 60s, read the Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk's Istanbul: Memories and the City. This is also a mémoire of childhood and youth, but it is less sentimental, and instead, absorbed with eccentric aspects of Istanb

Turkey in a book

I read this book in Istanbul and it was fabulous. Orga's prose is beautiful (even if his spoken english was limited at the time), and reads more fluidly than most novels. A reader interested in Turkey and the Turks can do no better.

A beautiful book

I was talked into buying this book by the owner of a book shop in the Sultan Ahmet, the old part of Istanbul. The back page had a guarantee that if I didn't like it, I could get my money back. What could I lose?As it turns out, I couldn't put the book down. The way in which Mr. Orga's powerful use of words created visuals of old Istanbul and relevant cities was brilliant. The story became very three-dimensional right at the outset.The account of Mr. Orga's family's survival during heart-wrenching times is inspiring; while the pain and suffering are so well conveyed, there is nothing gruesome about the book. The delicate way in which thoughts and events are described invokes the visuals and emotions the reader requires to feel the gravity of the situations; however, there is still a beauty of the human spirit that belies it all. This is a story I would recommend to any reader who enjoys feeling a story, rather than just reading it; to readers whose inner world is affected, even if just a little bit, by experiencing a well-presented story.

This book is quite amazing! - A little gem!

In the age of postmodern attempts to describe what "real" families are like Orga offers a compelling look at the life of a Turkish family (hence the title I guess)during the period between 1912 and 1940. This is an autobiography, the writer who is not a native English speker wrote the book in English - I give it 4.5 stars only because I find the language to be somewhat lacking, at the same time the subject matter is simply breath-takingThe author who was born into a prosperous family describes his family descent into poverty during WWI and their struggle to survive after the war. the book also offers a glimpse at the transition in Turkey's culture in the aftermath of WWI and Kemalist revolution. The book is very moving and the descriptions of the authors family are real the problems that people in the book are facing are also real offering a welcome respite from the made-up troubles of the families in current literature that strive to appear real.

The glory that was Istanbul

This is a delightful and deeply moving family saga spannining the years between 1910 and 1940 in Istanbul. It is kind of an autobiography, memoirs narrated from the eldest son of a once powerful Turkish bourgeois family. It stresses the tension of the transition from the Ottoman regime to that of the modern democracy invented by Kemal Ataturk. It is like a lament for the loss of the old order, not of the Ottoman one, because the author is a solid democrat, but of the old serenity as conceived by the bourgeois classes before 1918. The reader may enjoy some moments of excellent style in the traditional narrative literary form. The old Istanbul comes out as from an Edwardian scrap book. A non-Turkish reader will learn a lot for the clashes and the turmoil deep in the Turkish soul during and after the Great War. This is a masterpiece of low-key traditional literature, a piece of work that gives emphasis on the richness of sentiments. A must.