A Fez of the Heart: Travels Around Turkey in Search of a Hat - Softcover

Seal, Jeremy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0330343629 ISBN 13: 9780330343626

Publisher: Trans-Atlantic Pubns, 1995

Synopsis

'It was January 1993 when a kindly but disbelieving Turk in an ill-fitting suit and a homburg approached me as our flight was called at Heathrow Airport . . . '

About this title

From the Back Cover:

Inspired by a dusty fez in his parents' attic, Jeremy Seal set off in 1993 to trace the astonishing history of this cone-shaped hat. Soon, the quintessentially Turkish headgear became the key to understanding a country beset by contradictions. Seal's investigations took him from the fez-topped headstones of Istanbul's ghostly cemeteries to the remote town on the Black Sea where Ataturk, the father of modern Turkey, first banned the fez in 1925. From there Seal traveled around the country, visiting eastern cities where intractable fez wearers were once hanged, exploring the troubled Kurdish southeast, watching the production of fez-shaped hats for whirling dervishes in the mystical central city of Konya. The result of his unusual journey is an engaging and agile mix of history and travel, politics and reportage.

Synopsis:

This is Jeremy Seal's quest, by means of a fez, for the heart of a country culturally and spiritually at odds with herself. The fez's opposing associations - both revered Eastern-Islamic headdress and banal tourist souvenir - exactly reflects Turkey's cultural faultline. While Turkey pays court to the EC and becomes the latest mecca for mass-tourism, the resurgent voices of Islamic traditionalism and Kurdish separatism are stark reminders of the country's complex cultural topography.

About this edition

• Publisher: Trans-Atlantic Pubns
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0330343629
• ISBN 13: 9780330343626
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 305