Human Landscapes from My Country: An Epic Novel in Verse

Bol Partner

On the occasion of the poet's one-hundredth birthday, this masterwork is at last available in its entirety in English. When, on the eve of the Second World War, Nazim Hikmet (1902-1963)Turkey's most acclaimed and popular poetwas sentenced to twenty-eight years in prison for his Communist beliefs, he embarked on the writing of his epic, Human Landscapes from My Country. This 17,000-line verse-novel is made up of a traveler's vivid encounters with Turkish men and women from all walks of life. In colloquial language, Hikmet stages their private hopes and griefs, and through these many human dramas, he documents Turkey's historic transformation into a secular republic. Human Landscapes from My Country is ''lively...cinematographic...[able] to capture the least scholarly reader'' (Denise Levertov). Human Landscapes from My Country was published in an abridged English-language version by Persea Books twenty years ago. This new edition marks a major event in contemporary world literature.

Bol

Written during the Second World War while Hikmet was serving a thirteen-year sentence as a political prisoner, his verse-novel uses cinematic techniques to tell the story of the emergence of secular, modern Turkey by focusing on the always-entertaining stories of sundry characters from all walks of life. As his vignettes flash before our eyes at movie-like speed, it becomes clear he is also telling the turbulent story of the twentieth century itself and the ongoing struggle between tradition, which trusts in God, and modernity, which entrusts the world to human hands.

Amazon

Pagina's: 480, Paperback, Persea Books