- Hardcover: 256 pages
- Publisher: No Exit Press; Sgd Ltd edition (30 Mar 2007)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1842430467
- ISBN-13: 978-1842430460
- Product Dimensions: 18.6 x 13.2 x 3.2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 952,654 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Review
"Jakob Arjouni writes the best urban thrillers since Raymond Chandler.' Tempo, Hamburg. 'A remarkable debut' - The London Guardian; '..tautly narrated..not a word wasted' - London Sunday Times; 'An exceptional achievement' - Hungry Mind Review; 'The greatest German mystery novel since WWII' - Suddeutsche Zeitung; 'A worthy grandson of Marlowe and Spade.' - Stern; 'The latest wunderkind.' - Der Speigel; 'Germany's youngest and hottest mystery writer' - Wiener; 'A pitch black noir, powerful and tasty' - La Depeche; 'The protagonist of a most successful series of novels.' - Panorama; Critical Acclaim; Jakob Arjouni writes the best urban thrillers since Raymond Chandler.' Tempo, Hamburg. 'A remarkable debut' - The London Guardian; '..tautly narrated..not a word wasted' - London Sunday Times; 'An exceptional achievement' - Hungry Mind Review; 'The greatest German mystery novel since WWII' - Suddeutsche Zeitung; 'A worthy grandson of Marlowe and Spade.' - Stern; 'The latest wunderkind.' - Der Speigel; 'Germany's youngest and hottest mystery writer' - Wiener; 'A pitch black noir, powerful and tasty' - La Depeche; 'The protagonist of a most successful series of novels.' - Panorama Critical Acclaim; Jakob Arjouni writes the best urban thrillers since Raymond Chandler.' Tempo, Hamburg. 'A remarkable debut' - The London Guardian; '..tautly narrated..not a word wasted' - London Sunday Times; 'An exceptional achievement' - Hungry Mind Review; 'The greatest German mystery novel since WWII' - Suddeutsche Zeitung; 'A worthy grandson of Marlowe and Spade.' - Stern; 'The latest wunderkind.' - Der Speigel; 'Germany's youngest and hottest mystery writer' - Wiener
Product Description
Kismet is about organised crime and war profiteers, about the insanity of nationalism and the madness of the Balkan conflict, and about the longing for one great love. It is a thrilling, utterly captivating novel - Jakob Arjouni at his best. It all began with a favour. Kayankaya and Slibulsky had wanted to help out Romario, the owner of a small Brazilian restaurant, when he is threatened by extortionists. Then suddenly there were two bodies on the floor of Romario's restaurant, their faces caked in white powder. Kayankaya is troubled by these deaths and decides to find out who the men are, until he himself is pursued by a mafia organisation about whom nothing appears to be known. Gradually it becomes clear to Kayankaya that he is facing the most brutal and dangerous group of gangsters to have run Frankfurt's station quarter. And then a new assignment comes in: he is to find a woman he has seen in a video film, and who he is convinced was looking at him from the screen.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Darkly witty writing doesn't get much better than by Jakob Arjouni, the German-Turkish author of Kismet. It stars the private investigator Kayankaya who wisecracks his way through a violent takeover of the streets of Frankfurt, possibly Germany's dullest city, by a bunch of Croat nationalists. There's butchery galore, mafiosi fall by the wayside. Kayankaya - an ethnic Turk - usually finds himself on the margins of German society, facing racism and occasional odd jobs from immigrants. When one, a Brazilian, asks his help in dispatching the new thugs in town, the case quickly escalates into a war between rival gangs, and rather unpleasant details about human trafficking and poisonous confectionary reveal themselves.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The Kayankaya Quartet (of which this is the final book), was originally published in Germany between 1985 and 2001, the previous installments being Happy Birthday, Turk!, More Beer (which was previously released as And Still, Drink More), and One Man, One Murder. Set mainly in Frankfurt, they use the hardboiled detective genre to examine the changes underway in German culture, especially with regard to immigrants. Although private eye Kemal Kayankaya is the German-born son of Turkish guest workers, he comes across as a classic American PI: a guy whose smart mouth and streak of compassion lands him in plenty of trouble (and gets him roughed up quite a bit), and who wears weariness, cynicism, and disgust like beloved overcoat. His adventures often involve immigrants, and this one is no exception, as a Brazilian restaurateur asks him to help scare off a couple of weird gangsters demanding protection money. This small favor gets him entangled in the operations of a Croatian gang, an Albanian gang, and a young Bosnian girl whose mother is missing. The story is perfectly fine, quick paced, well translated, but for all that, feels somewhat stale. It's now been twenty years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the Kayankaya books are of the decade immediately after that (this last book is set in 1998, which is why the focus is on the Balkans). While they provide an interesting angle on Germany in the late '80s and '90s, they feel decidedly less relevant or fresh than when I originally read them. Still worth reading if you're interested in international crime fiction, and Germany in particular, but not vital.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
7 reviews
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Hard Boiled Racism in Frankfurt
6 Nov 2010
Format:Paperback
Kismet is part of a series featuring a German detective of Turkish extraction Kemal Kayankaya. The books are set in Frankfurt, but not the glittery efficient Frankfurt most visitors know from trade shows and business meetings. This story turns around the station area, the red light district where gangs struggle for control of the drugs, prostitution, gaming and protection rackets. The book surfaces the engrained racism of Germany towards its Turkish population (all of the industrial economies have deep racist thinking em bedded in their psyche, including Canada where I live, so this is not a particular slap on Germany, it is a fact that festers if ignored). Kismet, in which a group of Croatian nationalists is trying to wrest the area from its current Albanian, Turkish and German bosses. Kayankaya gets caught up in this almost by accident, killing two of the Albanians while trying to help a Brazilian friend. Struggling with a guilty conscious, and wanting to keep the Brazilian alive, he sets out to find out what is really behind the killings and who the people he killed are. In the best of Noir style, he becomes obsessed with the case, and won't let go no matter how often he is threatened or beaten up. The book gives a real feeling for the gritty side of Frankfurt and the ethnic tensions that color people's relationships. Kayankaya is the right mix of tough, smart, determined and vulnerable. He can suck up punishment and will kill if he has to but is not a bloodless automaton. All in all a fascinating look into Germany and an intriguing character. I will follow this series and look for the next books as they come out.
Enjoyable for fans of the genre looking for something a little different.
29 Mar 2011
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
If you new to the genre and looking for something great to sell it to you as literature, this isn't the title that will do it (check out Jim Thompson, Bill James, or others). If you read a lot in this genre and are looking for something new to add some variety, the characters and settings of this book are a nice change of pace. Good, entertaining summer reading, and a nice view into something a little different from the usual LA/Gotham hardboiled setting, or historical settings, but not something that made me want to run out and buy everything this author's ever written.
Hard-Boiled Europe
6 Mar 2011
Format:Paperback|Amazon Vine™ Review
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Arjouni's final novel in the Kayankaya series is a treat for crime fiction lovers: a breezy, first-person narrative situated firmly in the hard-boiled tradition. Comparisons to Chandler and McBain are rife, but the novelist Arjouni reminds me of the most is that pillar of the African American crime tradition, Chester Himes. Like Himes, Arjouni is his country's keenest observer of the intersections of race, masculinity, and the urban underworld. And like much of Himes's fiction, Kismet includes memorable scenes of surreal, explosive violence.
Originally published in German ten years ago, in 2001, some of Kismet's narrative details (I won't mention which, for fear of spoiling the "mystery") are dated, a product of specifically turn-of-the-millennium transformations to European society. Still, the novel affords great insight into Kayankaya's experiences as a Turkish-German man who, by all accounts, is as solidly working-class "Frankfurt" (the city in which he resides) as can be. For fans of the hard-boiled tradition, you can't go wrong with this finale to Kayankaya's adventures. The American publication of Kismet by Melville House leaves much to look forward to for the rest of the series' availability Stateside.
Originally published in German ten years ago, in 2001, some of Kismet's narrative details (I won't mention which, for fear of spoiling the "mystery") are dated, a product of specifically turn-of-the-millennium transformations to European society. Still, the novel affords great insight into Kayankaya's experiences as a Turkish-German man who, by all accounts, is as solidly working-class "Frankfurt" (the city in which he resides) as can be. For fans of the hard-boiled tradition, you can't go wrong with this finale to Kayankaya's adventures. The American publication of Kismet by Melville House leaves much to look forward to for the rest of the series' availability Stateside.
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