Author Yashar Kemal keeps the reader wanting more and more of the story. His descriptions of people and place are immaculate.
A book that reads very well with a style that gives a bit of every genre; love, suspense, action, espionage, mystery, political, thriller, western, revolutionary. It's a novel that grows from the despair of a single life into hope for an entire community. The book is a blend of many ingredients, leaving you with the taste for many flavors.
The author pulls out the pride and hate of a reader. You'll want revenge for a character as if he or she were your mother, sister or brother. You'll feel the pride of a mother or elder who see's their courageous young warrior as a guiding flame leading them out of the dark times. You'll know the sadness that comes with loss of a loved one at the orders of a tyrant. And you'll understand what it means to love a place of birth and its peoples so much that they're worth dying for.
Memed My Hawk is a wonderful Turkish epic that could represent just about any place, people and time in history; even ours.
*****
1961 First American Edition by Pantheon Books
Translated by Edouard Roditi
