Two Turkish-born German writers have won major literary prizes over the past week or so. Emine Sevgi Özdamar, the author of Life Is a Caravanserei and The Bridge of the Golden Horn, got the Alice Salomon Poetics Prize. It comes with a post as guest lecturer and €6000, and goes to writers whose work addresses biographical, intercultural and social issues and thus play a particular role in Germany's cultural and social life, they say. Özdamar is a lovely lady (Emine is a kind of nickname and means something like "trustworthy", or at least that's what she told me once) and it's always a pleasure to hear her read. Her past in the theatre and also her excellent, delightfully quirky writing see to that. Sign and sight just posted a rather nice tribute by Harald Jähner that you might like to read.
And Feridun Zaimoglu, author of all sorts of things from Kanak Sprak to the Ruhrpott epic Ruß, just got the Prize of the Literature Houses. More money but you have to work harder for it - €11,000 plus a big tour of all the Literature Houses. See the official website for the impressive list of previous awardees.
The two of them do not get along.
Showing posts with label emine sevgi özdamar. Show all posts
Showing posts with label emine sevgi özdamar. Show all posts
Tuesday, 24 January 2012
Wednesday, 16 April 2008
Free the Word!
We arrived in the rain. Or was it hail? London's weather was doing its very best to remind me of why I love living in Berlin. Pushed my credit card into a slot and out came two pre-booked tickets. I'm always so very impressed by technology - my friend told me it made me look like a country bumpkin when I said "Ooooh!"
And then we wandered around the huge Royal Festival Hall looking for the Spirit Level, where Emine Sevgi Özdamar was reading. It was tucked away in the basement, but looked like the coolest part of the joint. I see they're doing a poetry-cum-Northern soul & ska nite there soon. Sigh. When will Berlin's retro rockers finally dig the poetry beat, man? Although this may be one of those things one has to do oneself to get it done at all. I'm envisaging a sweaty event in the Roter Salon... But how will the rude boys and the hair-slided poet girls get along?
I digress. The venue was full to the brim and I had very nearly finished re-reading Die Brücke vom Goldenen Horn when Maureen Freely and Martin Chalmers came on stage. Strange, we thought, where is the author? But she did turn up, stealing the show the minute she entered the room, with an interpreter in tow. And the reading was marvellous, everything one might wish for - two brief extracts in German followed by longer sections of Martin Chalmers' very good translation. Lots of chatting, although sometimes the need for interpreting meant the answers didn't quite match the questions. So we learnt that Özdamar dislikes all forms of nationalism and the Turkish criticism that she should write in Turkish rather than German, that she loves the German of Brecht and Heine and that the tone of the book is deliberately sober.
The format was interesting. As I've said, Emine Sevgi Özdamar has a huge stage presence, and she really dwarfed everybody else on the podium. Maureen Freely was charming and witty, but I felt that Martin Chalmers and the interpreter almost blended into the background. That's something translators do tend to do - perhaps because they see themselves as providing a service of a kind to the authors themselves. And of course an interpreter really shouldn't steal the show from whoever they are speaking for. But I would have been interested to hear more from Martin Chalmers than the couple of statements he made on translating the book.
Sadly, the event had to come to an end, and I felt there were still many questions unanswered - why are there so many shoes in the book? How does she feel about her role as one of the few actively political women in late-1960s Istanbul? How did she feel about that back then?
I was once told by a Turkish-German that Turkey "didn't have a 68". Having no idea of contemporary Turkish history, I took his word for it. Özdamar's book proves that young man wrong. The difference between, say, Paris and Istanbul is that Turkey's political spring was followed by a military coup and huge violence and repression - sending the activists into prisons and exile. And The Bridge of the Golden Horn is an excellent and moving illustration of how it all came about.
I was initially surprised that Özdamar was on the programme of the Free the Word! festival with its theme of sedition. But she fitted in perfectly. In a year in which Europe is marking 40 years since 1968 and at a time when Turkish writers are facing a tough time, she brings together both aspects of activism and exile/persecution. Plus, the book is part of English PEN's excellent Writers in Translation programme (for last year), promoting free speech and intercultural understanding. And outstanding writing of course.
And then we wandered around the huge Royal Festival Hall looking for the Spirit Level, where Emine Sevgi Özdamar was reading. It was tucked away in the basement, but looked like the coolest part of the joint. I see they're doing a poetry-cum-Northern soul & ska nite there soon. Sigh. When will Berlin's retro rockers finally dig the poetry beat, man? Although this may be one of those things one has to do oneself to get it done at all. I'm envisaging a sweaty event in the Roter Salon... But how will the rude boys and the hair-slided poet girls get along?
I digress. The venue was full to the brim and I had very nearly finished re-reading Die Brücke vom Goldenen Horn when Maureen Freely and Martin Chalmers came on stage. Strange, we thought, where is the author? But she did turn up, stealing the show the minute she entered the room, with an interpreter in tow. And the reading was marvellous, everything one might wish for - two brief extracts in German followed by longer sections of Martin Chalmers' very good translation. Lots of chatting, although sometimes the need for interpreting meant the answers didn't quite match the questions. So we learnt that Özdamar dislikes all forms of nationalism and the Turkish criticism that she should write in Turkish rather than German, that she loves the German of Brecht and Heine and that the tone of the book is deliberately sober.
The format was interesting. As I've said, Emine Sevgi Özdamar has a huge stage presence, and she really dwarfed everybody else on the podium. Maureen Freely was charming and witty, but I felt that Martin Chalmers and the interpreter almost blended into the background. That's something translators do tend to do - perhaps because they see themselves as providing a service of a kind to the authors themselves. And of course an interpreter really shouldn't steal the show from whoever they are speaking for. But I would have been interested to hear more from Martin Chalmers than the couple of statements he made on translating the book.
Sadly, the event had to come to an end, and I felt there were still many questions unanswered - why are there so many shoes in the book? How does she feel about her role as one of the few actively political women in late-1960s Istanbul? How did she feel about that back then?
I was once told by a Turkish-German that Turkey "didn't have a 68". Having no idea of contemporary Turkish history, I took his word for it. Özdamar's book proves that young man wrong. The difference between, say, Paris and Istanbul is that Turkey's political spring was followed by a military coup and huge violence and repression - sending the activists into prisons and exile. And The Bridge of the Golden Horn is an excellent and moving illustration of how it all came about.
I was initially surprised that Özdamar was on the programme of the Free the Word! festival with its theme of sedition. But she fitted in perfectly. In a year in which Europe is marking 40 years since 1968 and at a time when Turkish writers are facing a tough time, she brings together both aspects of activism and exile/persecution. Plus, the book is part of English PEN's excellent Writers in Translation programme (for last year), promoting free speech and intercultural understanding. And outstanding writing of course.
Monday, 7 April 2008
Overly Excitable
I'm feeling tired and emotional after a weekend with too little sleep. Why? Because I decided to jet over to London for the amazing Free the Word! festival organised by International PEN this coming weekend. And that decision left me rather emotionally drained. But never fear - thanks to Grandma's Best Babysitting and School Collection Service (love ya mum!), my family will be in safe hands while I'm away.
What convinced me was the event featuring Emine Sevgi Özdamar. In conversation with the translator Maureen Freely and the writer Elif Shafak, no less. I have to admit, I've seen Ms Özdamar (or is it Ms Sevgi Özdamar - correct me if I'm wrong) reading in Berlin before. She's incredibly entertaining. An experienced actress, she knows how to keep an audience's attention. And she's one of those wonderful authors who have the guts to say, "Please don't take photos while I'm reading, I have a double chin and half-moon glasses. But you're welcome to take some of me posing nicely afterwards."
Her novel The Bridge of the Golden Horn is available in English from Serpent's Tail, translated by Martin Chalmers. She has been one of the few women writing on the "guest worker" experience that so many Turkish immigrants went through in the 1960s, although from an unusual perspective, as she comes from a more educated background than many of those who signed contracts for manual jobs in booming 60s and 70s Germany. And I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Unfortunately, I read it too long ago to tell you anything remotely relevant about it. But what I remember most is the way it captured West Berlin and named names, from the factory where both the protagonist and my mother-in-law worked to the road where the protagonist and my father-in-law lived. But the German and Turkish worlds in those days were so far apart that they almost certainly never met. In the first section, at least, Berlin is a cold, dark place with empty streets swathed in perpetual snow.
So I'll definitely be rereading it over the next few days. Oh, and I'll be going to a couple of seminars at the London Book Fair. But more on those after the fact.
What convinced me was the event featuring Emine Sevgi Özdamar. In conversation with the translator Maureen Freely and the writer Elif Shafak, no less. I have to admit, I've seen Ms Özdamar (or is it Ms Sevgi Özdamar - correct me if I'm wrong) reading in Berlin before. She's incredibly entertaining. An experienced actress, she knows how to keep an audience's attention. And she's one of those wonderful authors who have the guts to say, "Please don't take photos while I'm reading, I have a double chin and half-moon glasses. But you're welcome to take some of me posing nicely afterwards."
Her novel The Bridge of the Golden Horn is available in English from Serpent's Tail, translated by Martin Chalmers. She has been one of the few women writing on the "guest worker" experience that so many Turkish immigrants went through in the 1960s, although from an unusual perspective, as she comes from a more educated background than many of those who signed contracts for manual jobs in booming 60s and 70s Germany. And I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Unfortunately, I read it too long ago to tell you anything remotely relevant about it. But what I remember most is the way it captured West Berlin and named names, from the factory where both the protagonist and my mother-in-law worked to the road where the protagonist and my father-in-law lived. But the German and Turkish worlds in those days were so far apart that they almost certainly never met. In the first section, at least, Berlin is a cold, dark place with empty streets swathed in perpetual snow.
So I'll definitely be rereading it over the next few days. Oh, and I'll be going to a couple of seminars at the London Book Fair. But more on those after the fact.
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