(01/07/2009) Enlightenment by Maureen Freely. Woodstock/New York. 2008. Overlook Press. keywords: Literature America Turkey. 398 pages. Cover photo by Zeynep Kanra. Cover design by Plainclothes Ltd. 9781590200742.
FROM THE PUBLISHER -
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? 'A dark Conradian drama set in a beautifully illuminated Istanbul, where the past is always with us' - Orhan Pamuk, Nobel Prizewinning author of Snow. '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. 'A gripping novel' - The Independent. 'Playing out against a meticulously realized backdrop of Turkey in the years following the Cold War that feels thoroughly authentic, this sinister, complex political thriller snakes to a remarkably subtle conclusion.' - Independent on Sunday.
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