The Endless Country: A Personal Journey Through Turkey's First Hundred Years by Sami Kent
'Captivating. Kent effortlessly weaves travels that are close to his heart into a bigger story of Turkeys past and present' Mishal Husain
'A rich, spellbinding book: dense with people, stories, history, colour, lived experience . . . The book is alive on every page' Neel Mukherjee, Booker Prize-shortlisted author of The Lives of Others
The Endless Country takes a journey through Turkeys past the nation the authors father left decades ago and he returns to as a young man.
It is not about Erdogan or Ataturk, the two towering Presidents who have book-ended that history, and at times have appeared impossible to escape. Instead Sami Kents book goes deep beyond them, revealing a history as rich, layered and absurd as his familys favourite dessert, kunefe: a shredded wheat pastry with a core of melted cheese, a topping of pistachios, and a drowning of syrup.
From tiny weightlifters to the worlds biggest prison, from a failed socialist commune to a wildly successful orchid ice cream, the book is a tribute to the sheer bewildering diversity of Turkeys past: its people, their ideas and their struggles.