La casa sul Bosforo

The Istanbul narrated by Pinar Selek, through the memories of her childhood and youth in the "House on the Bosphorus," is a fairytale one. Over the span of twenty years, we follow the romantic intertwining of two couples: that of the revolutionary student Elif and the musician Hasan, and that of Sema, in search of herself, and Salih, the apprentice carpenter. But the main character is the neighborhood of Yedikule, which is laden with history and traditions, and preserves its authenticity despite the passing of time. All the characters who gravitate around the four main heroes are alive and tangible; of everyone, we know their origins, their daily lives, their trades, and the smallest details.

And yet, it is a fairytale not without its shadows; the book begins with the condemnation of the 1980 coup d’état and describes characters thirsty for freedom and social justice, tempted by terrorism or driven into exile. It is a "pink" fairytale where the women, romantic and passionate, all take their destiny into their own hands, shattering our prejudices. Finally, it is a utopian and "borderline" fairytale, populated by clearly visible Kurdish, Armenian, and Greek minorities: the Kurdish resistance is active, the Armenian culture is present, and the pogroms against the Greeks in 1955 and during the Cyprus crisis are evoked. Can a place exist where people of different origins meet and help one another?

Author: Pinar Selek

Feminist, antimilitarist, writer, sociologist, and tireless activist, Pinar Selek is an acrobat who builds bridges between diverse struggles. A victim of state repression—which seeks to sentence her to life imprisonment for a crime she did not commit—she was forced to flee Turkey in 2009. After spending two years in Germany, she settled in France. Despite the hardships of exile, she continues to work and travel, sharing her causes. Fandango Libri has already published The Mask of Truth (2015), The House on the Bosphorus (2018), Far from Home (2019), and The Feasting Ants (2020).