WHAT TURKISH PEOPLE READ.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3381, 4 July 1927, Page 7

WHAT TURKISH PEOPLE READ.

(By Halid© Edib, tne distmguisnea Turkish woman novelist.) (In an interview.) What kina oi boons ar© the people of Turkey reading to-day ? Westernised Turkey has been influenced by Trench culture mainly, therefore we have a great number of translations from french novels. The masses read ifumas, Jules Verne and i J aui do Hock. The higherclass readers who can read in Trench are very fond ot Paul Bourget and de Maupassant—while a few intellectuals have been greatly influenced by Flaubert and Balzac. Halid Zia was the greatest Turkish novelist of ffO years ago. He was extremely popular when he started the psychological novel in Turkish and brought into print the lives of the intellectual and aristocratic classes. The types in his long novels are slightly suited at times, but his characters in ins shorter stories, which he chose from the poorer classes, will remain enduring bits of Turkish fiction. Halid Zia was followed by Hussein Rahim, who has had popu.ny. He has brought into Turkish -fiction every possible living type, especially from the masses. His knowledge of all the dialects and the dwellers of the 'Turkish underworld of Constantinople, his satire and rich imagination, have don© a great deal to arouse a lasting taste in the Turkish public for Turkish novels.

uetectiv© stories, especially translations of Sherlock Holmes, have always had a large circulation and been very popular with the masses of the reading public in Turkey. Of all our great Turkish writers, Omer Seifeddine (he died five years ago) has the richest gift of humor. There is something utterly subtle, both in his stylo and in his art, like a murmuring river which one never sees, but which is apparent all the time to the ear. He has successfully brought into the Turkish novel the element of thought without being didactic. He has created men and women, both of today and of ancient times. He has created plots which preserve their simplicity and directness at the same time. 1 believe that his short stories can take their place beside the very best in Western fiction.

Yakoub Kadry’s “Nour Baba” (which means “Father Light”), is one of the really powerful novels in Turkish. It deals with a religious order of men and women called the Bektashy. It reveals, rather intimately, the rites, the loves and the psychology of the adherents of the order. There were very bitter comments on the bonk when it was published, by those who belonged to the order. Personally, I consider “Chohan Yildizi” (which means “Shepherd’s Star”) the best Turkish novel of the contemporary school. Unfortunately, it did not attract the attention it deserved, but 1 am convinced that time will bring it fuller recognition. The writer is one of our prolific and rather successful playwrights Yessary-Zade Mahmoud.

At the present day there is a decided deterioration in public taste, and an abundance of imitations of the rather had and cheap Western publications by writers, who think only of commercialising the tendencies of the day and increasing the unhealthy and degenerate mental appetite of the masses, whose nerves and moral poise have been shattred by the Great War.