Book Review
Last Train to Istanbul
Ayşe Kulin
John W. Baker, tr
Amazon Crossing 2013
382 pp.
ISBN 9781477807613
Ayşe Kulin is a distinguished, best-selling author who has written ten heavily-researched novels since 1997 on socially and politically controversial themes. First published in Turkey in 2002 as Nefes Nefes’e (“Breathless”), its first English translation was published by Everest Yayinlari in 2006, copyrighted by Translator John W. Baker, who in my opinion could have done a better job. According to her bio, Kulin herself comes from a family in similar circumstances to the one she depicts in Last Train.
Here’s the publisher’s blurb:
As the daughter of one of Turkey’s last Ottoman pashas, Selva could win the heart of any man in Ankara. Yet the spirited young beauty only has eyes for Rafael Alfandari, the handsome Jewish son of an esteemed court physician. In defiance of their families, they marry, fleeing to Paris to build a new life.
But when the Nazis invade France and begin rounding up Jews, the exiled lovers will learn that nothing—not war, not politics, not even religion—can break the bonds of family. For after they learn that Selva is but one of their fellow citizens trapped in France, a handful of brave Turkish diplomats hatch a plan to spirit the Alfandaris and hundreds of innocents, many of whom are Jewish, to safety. Together, they must traverse a war-torn continent, crossing enemy lines and risking everything in a desperate bid for freedom. From Ankara to Paris, Cairo, and Berlin, Last Train to Istanbul is an uplifting tale of love and adventure from Turkey’s beloved bestselling novelist Ayşe Kulin.
That description leaves out a number of main characters, particularly Selva’s family — her father, mother, sister and her husband and daughter, who spend the first third of the book squabbling and agonizing over Selva’s decision to marry Rafo, scion of a prominent Jewish family. Selva is younger, prettier, and more assertive than her sister Sabiha, whose husband Macit is a senior official in the Foreign Ministry when war threatens to engulf Turkey’s fragile new Republic under its second president, Mustafa İsmet İnönü. Quite understandably, Macit spends most of his time at work, which Sabiha starts to resent.
Fazil Resat Paşa, the sisters’ father, is a retired Ottoman-era consular official who has disowned Selva for marrying outside the Muslim faith, placing Sabiha and her mother Leman Hanim in the middle of a family drama that plays out in Ankara throughout most of the book.
Now, being Jewish by birth and having married a Muslim Türk with the enthusiastic assent of her family, I find the angst and turmoil around Selva’s choice to marry Rafo overly tendentious. It is the largest of many melodramas peppered throughout Kulin’s tale, few of which add substance to its arc. While I realize Turkey in 1940 was in the throws of modernization and many clung to the old ways, other mini-crises Kulin injects add little to the plot. They include a rape scene on a train near the end that Kulin lays on before resuming her narrative without any further consequences.
Sabiha has her own issues, which include jealousy of her adventurous sister and deteriorating relationships with husband Macit and their daughter Hülya, whom in her self-absorption she has neglected. Sabiha goes into psychoanalysis with a kindly psychiatrist, a family friend who at length confesses his attraction to her, further alienating her from Macit, but their sessions help to repair her neglect of Hülya. I sometimes found it difficult to feel sympathy for her and her privileged family.
Kulin switches points of view liberally in her chapters and even within scenes, with those of the sisters’ and their family members predominating, but every significant character takes center stage at one point or another. She is skillful enough to avoid confusing readers, but there is a lot of head-hopping along the way.
As the novel progressed, I kept hoping that someone like Humphrey Bogart would walk in to tell the characters what Rick told Ilsa and Laslo at the end of Casablanca: “… it doesn’t take much to see that the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Someday you’ll understand that.”
But in the end, I’m not sure Selva and her family (except perhaps for husband Macit) quite do. Despite some vivid descriptions of places and events, Last Train to Istanbul is laden with stiff prose and petty conflicts and incidents that, to me, inject drama for its own sake. But then, I know enough Turks to understand how gossip and innuendo can flourish under the veneer of propriety in a culture where keeping up appearances is so important.
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