Excavating Memory (Hardcover). This item is unavailable.Excavating Memory (Hardcover)

Hardcover. This study moves the acclaimed Turkish fiction writer Bilge Karasu (19301995) into a new critical arena by examining his poetics of memory, as laid out in his narratives on Istanbuls Beyoglu, once a cosmopolitan neighborhood called Pera. Karasu established his fame in literary criticism as an experimental modernist, but while themes such as sexuality, gender, and oppression have received critical attention, an essential tenet of Karasus oeuvre, the evocation of ethno-cultural identity, has remained unexplored: Excavating Memory brings to light this dimension. Through his non-referential and ambiguous renderings of memory, Karasu gives in his Beyoglu narratives unique expression to ethno-cultural difference in Turkish literature, and lets through his own repressed minority identity. By using Walter Benjamins autobiographical work as a heuristic premise for illuminating Karasu, Goekberk establishes an innovative intercultural framework, which brings into dialogue two representative writers of the twentieth century over temporal and spatial distances. This book brings the Turkish writer Bilge Karasu (19301995) into a new critical spotlight by examining the authors poetics of memory, as laid out in his narratives on Istanbuls Beyoglu. Goekberk contextualizes these posthumously published pieces in an approach informed by studies on memory, identity, place, and remembering as literary representation. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.…