Mustafa Kemal

[stoutfellow]

I'm about halfway through Atatürk, reading about the chaotic period just after World War I, as he and his cohorts tried to organize resistance against the Allies. I know there are at least two people on my FL who know a thing or two about Turkey, and I'm curious: can anyone recommend a good novelistic treatment of this period? There are some really outsize characters here - Enver Pasha, Lame Osman, Kemal himself - and it just looks ripe for fictionalization. (For that matter, I think any fantasist who's tired of the standard motifs could do worse than look here for world-building ideas.)

Comments

[mmegaera.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry, but those names conjure up Ramses' job as spy in WWI Egypt in the Amelia Peabody books [g].

No help at all, I'm afraid.

[stoutfellow.livejournal.com]

I can see that.

I think the interwar Arab lands have been mined a bit more heavily, between the romance of archaeology and T. E. Lawrence.

[mmegaera.livejournal.com]

Probably. Although most of the Amelia Peabody series takes place well before WWI. The first book is set in the 1880s, and He Shall Thunder in the Sky, the book Ramses plays spy in, takes place during the 1914-1915 excavation season.

[pompe.livejournal.com]

I have no idea if he's covered the period, but Yasar Kemal might have written something worthwhile.

[stoutfellow.livejournal.com]

Hmm... A quick lookaround is a little discouraging, but I'll look a little deeper.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

I know one novel that doesn't qualify: Birds without wings by de Bernières. The chapters chronicling the rise of Atatürk are colourless and sketchy. Shame because, as you say, he's the kind of outsized personality who would've lent himself well to fictionalisation, and it's not a bad novel overall.