Scan barcode
A review by jnikolova
أطلس القارات الضبابية by İhsan Oktay Anar
4.0
Also available on the WondrousBooks blog.
Puslu Kıtalar Atlası (The Atlas of Misty Continents) - from the first moment I laid eyes on the title, I wanted to read this book. I believe I first saw it in Turkey in 2015 and the title just sounded so beautiful to me that years later I asked my mom to buy it for me while on a trip to Turkey.
My hopes were indeed justified as this is quite probably the best Turkish book I've read so far, and I've probably read as many Turkish, as Bulgarian books in my life.
What enchanted me in The Atlas of Misty Continents was the entire magically and fantastically adventurous atmosphere of a historical, political and philosophical crime-fairytale. This is the best that I can say to describe the book.
In short, we are introduced to the Istanbul/Konstantiniye (Constantinople) of the Ottoman empire, with our list of main characters including a man, Uzun Ihsan Efendi (the Tall Mr Ihsan) who, in conjunction with Descartes, believes that he is, but also that everyone else "is" because of him and exists only in his mind; his son, Bunyamin, having risen from the dead, gruesomely scarred, impossibly fantastical and deeply embedded into the fabric of the mystery of the book; and Ebrehe, the leader of the Ottoman intelligence organization, a terrifying man who possesses all the knowledge one man can, but is in search of the answer of a much greater secret. These characters are accompanied by a versatile group of secondary characters such as a boy who never sleeps, a Frenchman obsessed with the human body, a bearded money and many more.
Every small story in the book was interesting on its own and fit wonderfully in the bigger storyline, even if it initially didn't seem a part of it. For some time I even thought that the fairytales told between the scenes of the main story were not even a part of it, until I realized that, on the contrary, they play an important role.
I loved the pirate adventures, the fortress sieges, the alchemical search of knowledge, the philosophical debate over one's existence.
For a book of not even 250 pages, The Atlas of Misty Continents managed to take me, as a reader, on a wonderful journey throughout the world of Ottoman mysticism.
P.S. I'll never fully understand Turkish literature's obsession with dreams. I've read so many books which lean heavily on the world of dreams, most notably the current one and Nazlı Eray's The Street of Different Dreams (which tells the story of a mondern-day woman who in dreams meets Eva Peron (?), falls in love with her fiance's father's young cloning and weird things like that).
Puslu Kıtalar Atlası (The Atlas of Misty Continents) - from the first moment I laid eyes on the title, I wanted to read this book. I believe I first saw it in Turkey in 2015 and the title just sounded so beautiful to me that years later I asked my mom to buy it for me while on a trip to Turkey.
My hopes were indeed justified as this is quite probably the best Turkish book I've read so far, and I've probably read as many Turkish, as Bulgarian books in my life.
What enchanted me in The Atlas of Misty Continents was the entire magically and fantastically adventurous atmosphere of a historical, political and philosophical crime-fairytale. This is the best that I can say to describe the book.
In short, we are introduced to the Istanbul/Konstantiniye (Constantinople) of the Ottoman empire, with our list of main characters including a man, Uzun Ihsan Efendi (the Tall Mr Ihsan) who, in conjunction with Descartes, believes that he is, but also that everyone else "is" because of him and exists only in his mind; his son, Bunyamin, having risen from the dead, gruesomely scarred, impossibly fantastical and deeply embedded into the fabric of the mystery of the book; and Ebrehe, the leader of the Ottoman intelligence organization, a terrifying man who possesses all the knowledge one man can, but is in search of the answer of a much greater secret. These characters are accompanied by a versatile group of secondary characters such as a boy who never sleeps, a Frenchman obsessed with the human body, a bearded money and many more.
Every small story in the book was interesting on its own and fit wonderfully in the bigger storyline, even if it initially didn't seem a part of it. For some time I even thought that the fairytales told between the scenes of the main story were not even a part of it, until I realized that, on the contrary, they play an important role.
I loved the pirate adventures, the fortress sieges, the alchemical search of knowledge, the philosophical debate over one's existence.
For a book of not even 250 pages, The Atlas of Misty Continents managed to take me, as a reader, on a wonderful journey throughout the world of Ottoman mysticism.
P.S. I'll never fully understand Turkish literature's obsession with dreams. I've read so many books which lean heavily on the world of dreams, most notably the current one and Nazlı Eray's The Street of Different Dreams (which tells the story of a mondern-day woman who in dreams meets Eva Peron (?), falls in love with her fiance's father's young cloning and weird things like that).