Under the Shadow

Rage and Revolution in Modern Turkey

By Kaya Genc

2016

First Published

3.83

Average Rating

243

Number of Pages

7H25M

Audio Length

Turkey stands at the crossroads of the Middle East—caught between the West and ISIS, Syria and Russia, and governed by an increasingly forceful leader. Acclaimed writer Kaya Genc has been covering his country for the past decade. In Under the Shadow he meets activists from both sides of Turkey's political Gezi park protestors who fought tear gas and batons to transform their country's future, and supporters of Erdogan's conservative vision who are no less passionate in their activism. He talks to artists and authors to ask whether the New Turkey is a good place to for them to live and work. He interviews censored journalists and conservative writers both angered by what has been going on in their country.He meets Turkey's Wall Street types who take to the streets despite the enormity of what they can lose as well as the young Islamic entrepreneurs who drive Turkey's economy.While talking to Turkey's angry young people Genc weaves in historical stories, visions and mythologies, showing how Turkey's progressives and conservatives take their ideological roots from two political movements born in the Ottoman the Young Turks and the Young Ottomans, two groups of intellectuals who were united in their determination to make their country more democratic. He shows a divided society coming to terms with the 21st Century, and in doing so, gets to the heart of the compelling conflicts between history and modernity in the Middle East.

Avg Rating

3.83

Number of Ratings

5 STARS

26%

4 STARS

41%

3 STARS

25%

2 STARS

1 STARS

goodreads

Author

Kaya Genc

Author · 4 books

Kaya Genç is the author of three books from Bloomsbury Publishing: The Lion and the Nightingale (2019), Under the Shadow (2016) and An Istanbul Anthology (2015). The Economist called Under the Shadow a ‘refreshingly balanced’ book whose author ‘has announced himself as a voice to be listened to’. The Los Angeles Review of Books described An Istanbul Anthology as ‘a compellingly real picture of the city’. Kaya has contributed to the world’s leading journals and newspapers, including two front page stories in The New York Times, cover stories in The New York Review of Books, Foreign Affairs and The Times Literary Supplement, and essays and articles in The New Yorker, The Nation, The Paris Review, The Guardian, The Financial Times, The New Statesman, The New Republic, Time, Newsweek and The London Review of Books. The Atlantic picked Kaya’s writings for the magazine’s ‘best works of journalism in 2014’ list. A critic for Artforum and Art in America, and a contributing editor at Index on Censorship, Kaya gave lectures at venues including the Royal Anthropological Institute, and appeared live on flagship programmes including the Leonard Lopate Show on WNYC and BBC’s Start the Week. He is the Istanbul correspondent of the Los Angeles Review of Books. Kaya has been a speaker at Edinburgh, Jaipur and Ways With Words book festivals, and he holds a Ph.D. in English Literature.