Benutzerin:Adelequested/The Bastard of Istanbu

Der Bastard von Istanbul ist ein Roman der türkischen Schriftstellerin Elif Shafak. Der Roman wurde ursprünglich auf Englisch verfasst und erschien 2006 bei Viking Adult. Eine Übesetzung ins Türkische erfolgte im März 2006 durch Aslı Biçen unter dem Titel Baba ve Piç und wurde in der Türkei zum Bestseller.

Erzählt wird die Geschichte einer türkischen und einer armenischen Familie.

Türkische und arrmenische Familie, biographisch, historische und kulturell verbunden, aber durch die Vertreibung der Armenier aus der türksichen Gesellschaft getrennt. 1915 Turkish massacre and deportation of Armenians, failure to confront the past, family secrets. asfasfas

Inhalt

Handlung

The story is centered around the characters of Asya Kazancı and Armanoush Tchakhmakhchian. It is set in Tucson, Arizona; San Francisco, California; and Istanbul, Turkey. The novel deals with their families and how they are connected through the events of the 1915 Armenian genocide. At age nineteen, Armanoush travels secretly to Istanbul to search for her Armenian roots.

Roman beginnt mit Zeliha's Versuch eine Abtreibung durchführen zu lassen.

Armanoush, the Armenian-American stepdaughter of the sisters' estranged brother comes to Istanbul for a visit.

Figuren

Familie Kazanci - based in Istanbul

Petite Ma - the almost centennial grandmother

Gülsüm - the mother, bold, traditionalist

Banu - oldest daughter

Feride - a hypochondriac interested in accidents and disaster

Cevriye - a History teacher

Zeliha Kazanci - youngest daughter rebellious, but also places importance on traditional cultural practices such as the delicacy of teacups and the ritual of prayer. embodies anger, rage, frustration and strength. owns a tattoo parlor, wears miniskirts, speaks her mind, bridging boh ancient custom and radical modernism.

Mustafa Kazanci - Gulsum's only son, Zeliha's older brother, introduced as a "king in his house" - arrogant, rude, greedy and unlikeable as a child, most of the men in the Kazanci family die unexpected deaths before reaching the age of fifty - Mustafa is sent away for school as a form of protection. resides in Arizona, returns to istanbul only at the end of the novel. S. 113

Aysa - Zeliha's daughter, suffers for not knowing her origins, for not finding a definite place in teh world.

Familie Tchakhmakchian - Based in San Francisco

Shushan, Shuhsan's brother Dikran Stamboulian, her children Varsenig, mother of twin girls, Zarouhi, a primary school teacher, Surpun, professor of humanities at the university of Berkely, Barsam, Armanoush's father.

Themen

Tradition vs Moderrne

Eine Familie lebt in den Vereinigten Staaten - armenische Flüchtlinge - betonen die Bedeutung von Traditionen. Die türksiche Familie verblieb in Istanbul, hat sich modernisiert. S. 112

Turkish family: old-fashioned decoration of the interior, old furniture, old carpets, trinkets - family lives in a old house, a Turkish konak with high ceiling; mother Gulsum prefers son to her daughters, does not understand her youngest daughter Zeliha, who is modern, emancipated, wears miniiskirts, and Asya, the grandaughter, who is very libertine, living only in the presence. S.78

Armenian family: interior described as oldish, many carpets, antique silverware, the samovar. S.80

Mustafa's Begräbnis - the family chooses not to bury the body immediately, which is rare in Turkish society. Instead, Mustafa's body is washed, prepared for burial and transported back to the Kazanci household for a viewing, despite numerous religious objections. The Kazanci women blend and bend the rules of Islam depending on their emotional needs. They determine that the body should remain visible to family and friends, but more importantly, to the reader. It is significant that the novel ends with Mustafa's body resting within the Kazanci household, unburied, shrouded, in much the same role as his entire life: surronded by women, silent, lifeless and yet, significant. The women cricle around Mustafa's shroud, creating a new space and a new ritual. S.115

Vergangenheitsbewältigung

past difficult to understand for younger generation - Asya (lacks knowledge of her own past as a bastard), no education in school about Armenian genocide in 1915-1917. Armanoush knows more, but Shushan's past remains a mystery.S.81

Mustafa hints at regrets, but does not articulate them. the narrator notes "If truth be told, more than Arizona or any other place, it was the future that he (Mustafa) had chosen to settle in and call his home - a home with a backdoor closed to the past" (S.285- deutsche Übersetzung nachschlagen!). Without a past, Mustafa is an unactualized shell. S.114

Armanoush on the differences between Armenian and Turkish culture: "For the Armenians, time was a cycle in which the past incarnated in the present and the present birthed the future. For the Turks, time was a multipyphenated line, where the past ended at some definite point and the present started an new from scratch, and there was nothing but rupture in beween." (165-5). (Deutsche Übersetzung nachschlagen).

Shafak highlight the weakness and lifelessness of the present day, Americanized Mustafa - Mustafa is a creation of his heritage, nothing more, nothing less. Due to family pressures, family heritage and political upheaval, he could not have been other than he was. The weight and compelxity of the intersections of his particular identity did not allow for tools that would enable atonement. Instead he seeks silence, distance and avoidance. Mustafa is the product of secrets, pain and tragedy. His attempt at a life of silence obviates the need for healing. Mustafa's death opens the door for a discussion of taboo, rape, incest and genocide. S.117

Mustafa's weakness prevents him from confronting his own past, which he escapes as long as he can. However, upon his return to Istanbul, he finally acepts his past, and no longer wishing to live a lie, he succumbs to his fated destiny. Aware that Auntie Banu had poisoned his ashure, he eats it anyway. S.117

Last und Aufbruch patriarchaler Strukturen

[Mustafa veranschaulicht] cultural importance of the only male in a Turkish family. typically, famlies would rely on the male to complete all business transactions in addition to offering a certain unspoken respectability. - Shafak allows the story to unfold through the Kazanci women. [the voices of women dominate] Mustafa is idea-in-form, functiosn purely as a cultural stereotype representative of historical ideologies - deified, fragmented, bereft of emotions, mustafa's voice arrives in only two sections of the novel: zeliah's rape and Mustafa*s own death. S. 114

Armenian genocide

explored thorugh the story of Hovhannes Stamboulian, an Armenian author and intellectual. he is taken by guards while working on a children's story and marched to prison. after his deat, most of Hovhannes' sons and aughters move to the United States. Hovhannes' daughter, Shushan, is separated from her family and stays behind. She marries into the Kazanci familiy and ultimatley abandons them to rejoin her Armenian family in the United States. Her abandoned Turkish family assumes a family curse. S.116

Motive

Noah's Flut

the novel opens with the lines "whatever falls from the sky above, thou shall not curse it. That includes the rain" (1). Water serves as a linguistic device at critical times in the story, meant to draw attention to the implicit cultural identifiers. In this case, Zeliha, on her way to obtain an abortion curses the rain, in direct contrast to etiquette and expected cultural norms. ... the major events in this novel all incorporate rain. S.114

the element of rain becomes the link that allows an object to transcend daily discourse and enter into myth. the rain from this scene (Zeliah seeking the abortion) links modern day Istanbul and Zeliha's story directly to the story Noah's ark, as told by Aunt Banu, focussing ont the way all the members of Noah's arc must share food - [forshwadowing!) - create [evoke?] community and sustainability through the image of a single pot of ashure. Noah's Arc models an narrative that involves flood, famine, hardship and salvation. S.115

Rain signifies growth, change and transfer and links the three major events of this novel: Zeliha's rape, Zeliha's abortion and Mustafa's death. S.115

As the body is prepared for burial, it starts to rain - water falls from the sky, soccer fans flood the street - alerts the readers to the underlying mythological framework - Noah's flood has begun to trickle in a modern era, blending old with new, a plac with chronological time. S.115

the story of Zliah*s rape follows closely on the heels of Banu's retelling of Noah's ark and ashure. The story begins "But the day Auntie Zeliha was raped was not a rainy day". (307 -deutsche Übersetzung nachschlagen). The abesence of rain highlights the physical divide, the rupture of time and of nature [.and of] the natural flow of life. S.116

Erzähltechnik

Shafak creates stereotypes as a necessary structure which enables the novel to quickly access

both confusing and complex scenarios generated by the rupture of a society. Therefore,

she assigns characters specific and recognizable roles as a stylistic writing technique. The

characters must obviate their identities and societal roles in order for the book to assume

the mythological presence that it acquires. She then shakes up the plot by deviating from

the characters’ assigned social roles, which serves to enhance the often confusing scenarios involved in forced separation. S. 111

Shafak takes great pains to explain a character's societal and cultural significance. She uses categories as names, creating nick-names laden with socially constructed, obvious and essentialized identities. Characters represent a specific aspect of a society and their actions. S.112

Both Asya and Armanoush interact with social groups named for their attributes. Armanoush belongs to an online chat room where everyone has given themselves labels, such as hers: Madame My-Exiled-Soul. Asya often visits a cafe in Istanbul where her friends are labeld, but not named. For example, she dates the Dipsomanica Cartoonist. Framed by their titles, the characters in this novel outline basic cultural stereotypes. S.118

Using Auntie Banu's voice, Shafak incorporates traditional fairy tales into the story. The popular fairy tale style introduction "Once there was; once there wasn't" frames the novel, a verbal signifier that allows for a different sort of reality. S.117

Shafak utilizes the djinni, magical and mischievous deities, as a theater prop. Auntie Banu relies upon djinni to tell her of historical events. These voices build a bridge over the ever-widening gap created by war, incest and rape. S.118

Auntie Banu's narration in addition to the elements of mythology and cultural stereotypes all enable the transcendence of Mustafa's death from the death of an individual into a redemptive, healing space, one that overcomes tabbo and secret.S. S.118

Rezeption

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Schauspieladaption

The novel was adapted into a theatre play in Italian language by Angelo Savelli titled La Bastarda Di Istanbul, and was staged by Teatro di Rifredi in Florence, Italy. Its premiere took place on March 3, 2015 starring Turkish actress Serra Yılmaz.

Prozess gegen die Autorin

In June 2006, Kemal Kerinçsiz, a nationalist lawyer, sued Elif Shafak for allegedly "insulting Turkishness" in her novel by dealing with the Armenian Genocide in the last years of the Ottoman Empire. The lawsuit was opened at Istanbul's Beyoğlu district court in accordance with Article 301 of the Turkish Criminal Code. After the prosecutor dropped the charges due to lack of insult, the lawyer refiled his complaint at a higher court, the Beyoglu 2nd Court of First Instance, in July 2006.

Shafak faced a sentence of up to three years in prison for the remarks made in her novel. In September 2006, the court, attended also by Joost Lagendijk, co-chair of the delegation to the EU–Turkey Joint Parliamentary Committee, acquitted her of criminal charges due to lack of legal grounds for the crime in question and insufficient evidence in the controversial trial.