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Songs My Mother Never Taught Me
 
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Songs My Mother Never Taught Me (Paperback)

by Selcuk Altun (Author)
3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
RRP: £7.99
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Songs My Mother Never Taught Me + Storm on Horseback: The Seljuk Warriors of Turkey + The Grand Turk: Sultan Mehmet II - Conqueror of Constantinople, Master of an Empire and Lord of Two Seas
Price For All Three: £36.62

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Product details

  • Paperback: 212 pages
  • Publisher: Telegram Books (Aug 2008)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 1846590531
  • ISBN-13: 978-1846590535
  • Product Dimensions: 19.8 x 12.7 x 1.8 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 53,125 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

Product Description
After the death of his overbearing mother, the privileged Arda reclines in his wealth, reflecting on his young life, and on the life of his father, the famous mathematician Mursel Ergenekon, who was murdered on Arda's fourteenth birthday. While on the other side of the city 'your humble servant' Bedirhan has decided to pack in his ten-year career as an assassin. Their two lives become intrinsically bound in this remarkable thriller that takes us through the streets of Istanbul. We learn that Bedirhan in fact killed Arda's father, and that they share more in common than he or we could begin to imagine. Meanwhile, Selcuk Altun, a former family friend, is playing a deadly game, providing Arda with clues to track down his father's killer...

About the Author
Selcuk Altun was born in Artvin, Turkey in 1950. He lives in Istanbul and Songs My Mother Never Taught Me is his fourth novel. He is a retired banking executive and a bibliophile.

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What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

Songs My Mother Never Taught Me
86% buy the item featured on this page:
Songs My Mother Never Taught Me 3.0 out of 5 stars (2)
£5.99
The Grand Turk: Sultan Mehmet II - Conqueror of Constantinople, Master of an Empire and Lord of Two Seas
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Customer Reviews

2 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
3.0 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars A hit and miss internaional debut, 30 Jun 2009
By Mutt (Ankara, Turkey) - See all my reviews
Retired banker and self-confessed bibliophile Selçuk Altun made a belated entry onto the international literary scene in 2008 when this curious little crime thriller, more akin to Orhan Pamuk than Mehmet Murat Somer, became the first of his four publications to date to be translated into English.

The twisted tale alternates between narrators Arda, the recently liberated son of an Istanbul intellectual and an over-bearing mother, and Bedirhan, a worn-out assassin looking for escape, who both fall into the meta-literate manipulations of the vile Selçuk Altun, a Machiavellian puppet master novelist.

Altun confronts the age-old Turkish conflict between secular modernism and Islamic tradition with the psychological outpourings of his two opposing yet conjoined antagonists who spew forth literary references in their metaphysical battle that ends with a somewhat out-of-place tour of Istanbul's forgotten historical landmarks.

While not exactly a crime thriller in the traditional sense the slow and edgy revelations of the multi-layered links between A and B make for fascinating reading but the whole thing feels out of place divorced from the rest of the authors body of work which is all-to-briefly briefly referenced.

Might my father's ghost be watching this postmodern duel which would be ended by numbers?
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0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars A good tour of Istanbul, not entirely successful as crime fic., 17 Mar 2009
By Feanor (London, UK) - See all my reviews
This is interesting in many ways. It's not much of a crime novel, although there are several murders. The scion of a wealthy family who has been dominated by his mother all his life rejoices at her death and slowly falls into passivity and ennui. A poor man becomes a hired killer and realises by and by that the assassinations he performs, ostensibly in the service of a higher morality and in the name of the Qur'an, are nothing more than in the cause of selfish vendettas of his masters. Naturally, the paths of both protagonists converge (entirely by means of a deus ex machina, a character in the book who is often called odious and is also named Selçuk Altun). What remains at the end? A rather delicious tour around the wonderful city of Istanbul, many references to mother-hating poetry by various authors, and a state of befuddlement in yours truly's mind.
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