Death in Troy

By Bilge Karasu

1963

First Published

3.98

Average Rating

179

Number of Pages

5H28M

Audio Length

Mushfik is a young man growing up in Turkey, first in Sarikum, a small coastal village, and later in urban Istanbul. He comes of age in an atmosphere of sublimated, disoriented eroticism, his impulses restrained by religious and sexual taboos, rigid gender roles, stifling maternal love, and the enforced silences of social decorum. Unable to adapt easily to society's unspoken rules, he is driven to the point of insanity from which he must slowly and painfully return. Told from several points of view and structured in a series of intersecting flashbacks and interior monologues, Death in Troy describes the difficult geography of male intimacy from multiple perspectives–adolescent friendship, homosexual desire, mother-son bonds, and the relationships between men and women. In a complex chorus of styles and voices, Karasu evokes states of exaltation, humiliation, passion, and despair to create a jarring disharmony of one boy's growth into manhood.

Avg Rating

3.98

Number of Ratings

374

5 STARS

34%

4 STARS

38%

3 STARS

22%

2 STARS

1 STARS

goodreads

Author

Bilge Karasu

Author · 6 books

Bilge Karasu (1930–1995) was born in Istanbul and became the pre-eminent Turkish modernist writer. Besides short stories and novels he was also a well-known translator. A graduate of the philosophy department of the Faculty of Letters of Istanbul University, Mr. Karasu worked in the foreign broadcast department of Radio Ankara until a Rockefeller University scholarship made it possible for him to continue his studies in Europe. After returning to Turkey, he went to work at Hacettepe University, where he lectured in philosophy. In 1963, Mr. Karasu won the Turkish Language Institute’s Translation Award with Olen Adam, for a translation of D. H. Lawrence’s The Man Who Died. By that time, he had begun to experiment with new forms of expression in his collection of stories entitled Troya’da Olum Vardi (Death in Troy). He won the Sait Faik Story Award eight years later with Uzun Surmus Bir Gundu Aksami (Evening of a Long Day). By the beginning of the 1980s, he had tried an abstract form of expression in Gocmus Kediler Bahcesi (The Garden of Departed Cats) and incorporated other forms of art into his writing. He attempted different uses of form and content in works he styled "texts" rather than "stories." His other works include Kismet Bufessi (Kiosk of Destiny), a collection of short stories; and Kilavuz (The Guide).