Emine Sevgi Özdamar

Reason Read: botm June 2022 Reading 1001, Asian Author (Turkey). This is a coming of age story told by Emine Sevgi Özdamar and I think this story probably reflects her own experiences and I also think that it is told in a poetic and crude ways which I suspect might be true to the culture and reflects a woman's world in this middle east setting. The time is the politically turbulent period following WWII. The family has many difficulties and moves frequently; Istanbul to Bursa, then to show more Ankara and back to Istanbul.

"The author’s wonderful use of local narrative, storytelling, proverbs and prayers, and a prose that moves from the lyrical to gritty humour, re-creates this microcosm of neighbourhoods from a young girl’s intimate perspective."https://elifthereader.com/books/life-is-a-caravanserai-emine-sevgi-ozdamar/.

This book was both hard and easy to read. The lack of breaks between events and stories and no chapters makes it a bit hard but the actual reading moves along without problem. It is a memoir, distorted by the way a youth will see things but also filled with folklore and the way the author puts together sentences almost poetic. Coming of age: The story introduces us to the protagonist while she is a foetus and takes us to her decision to leave her family and go to Germany with the first wave of workers to Germany. The book was written in German.

Book one Ingeborg Backmann Prize. show less

While this book was interesting, I’m not sure it was my cup of tea. I think “hectic” is a fantastic way to start off describing it. We breeze through quite a bit of the narrator’s life and it’s hard to be sure what it meant. Despite the quick pace of events, the book felt very, very slow. Since it was a memoir (or a semi-autobiographical novel, as I see elsewhere), I expected to feel some sort of attachment for the main character, but it was surprisingly difficult. I certainly show more thought her journey was interesting. How many stories take place within a Cold War-era Berlin factory? Or in Istanbul? Not very many, at least not many that I read.

Sevgi’s goal in life is to become an actress. She’s willing to do more or less anything to get there. Saving money for theatre school is the purpose of her time in Berlin, but she also does plenty of other things in order to fit the image of actress. This includes many attempts at giving up her virginity, which she calls her “diamond”. Several men tell her that she is too young for sex, but she persists in thinking that her diamond is holding her back. This is just one of the occurrences which made me struggle to relate to her. When she does give up that diamond, she sleeps with men indiscriminately, often practicing her acting skills by faking her pleasure.

Something I did enjoy here was the book’s focus on literature, although not necessarily the political outcome of Sevgi’s learning. Sevgi is determined to educate herself, beginning with a book received from the communist hostel warden and continuing throughout her life. Books are treasures. By the end of the novel, however, it seemed that all of Sevgi’s learning, in fact her whole journey, was centered on teaching her to become a communist. While communism at its core is an interesting ideology, I found it hard to sympathize with someone who ignored the fact that communist countries regularly turn into dictatorships and continued following an idealized belief which has little to no real world value.

I suspect that were I older, I would have found more to enjoy in this book. If I’d lived through the events referenced in the USA, I would perhaps have been better able to draw connections and enjoy the allusions sprinkled throughout. As it stands, though, I found this book difficult to get through and at times, very much over my head. I can’t recommend it.

http://chikune.com/blog/?p=1050 show less

I thought Emine Sevgi Odamar's "Life is a Caravanserai- Has two doors I came in one, I went out the other" was okay.

The story itself is kind of interesting.... it's a series of stories told by a girl growing up in 1960's Turkey. There were some great little vignettes and there were others that were just kind of strange. The book moves along at a frenetic pace, leaping from story to story. It reminded me of listening to someone I know who has a hardcore drug habit... she talks in the exact show more same way.

I had real trouble with the language at first.... I think that was due to translation issues not an attempt to keep the novel's voice. I stopped noticing it before I got halfway through, so either I adjusted or it got better as I went along.

Overall, a middling rating from me. I'm not particularly inspired to read anything else by this author. show less

There's no plot, so it's a slice-of-life novel, but it's too surface-level for this - there's nothing there for readers to connect with or respond to on an emotional level. I lost interest in this pretty quickly.