Dying is Easier than Loving

A deeply compelling and immersive narrative about love, desire, loneliness and landscape.Elif Shafak (on book 1 of the series) Altan uses a Tolstoyan combination of the epic and the intimate to explore questions of national identity and historical narrative.The Observer Altans descriptions of a stifling atmosphere of authoritarian repression in Istanbul in the early 1900s conjure up constant comparisons with todays Turkey.The TLS The third book in the Ottoman Quartet, set in the years leading up to WWI, is steeped in the tumultuous events and the political struggle that shaped 20th century Turkey, from the war against the Bulgarian army and the coup that resulted in the nations one-party rule. Against this background, a tormented, obsessive love affair unfolds between Nizam, the son of Hikmet Bey, and Russian pianist Anya. This tapestry of love and war allows Altan to analyse the structure of male power and its degeneration into violence against women, uncompromising nationalism, and pervasive censorship. Atan confirms himself as a caustic, courageous writer, never afraid to denounce an arrogant and undemocratic power, allowing the reader to read between the lines the situation of contemporary Turkey.