A fez of the heart: Travels around Turkey in search of a hat - Hardcover

Seal, Jeremy

3.66

378 ratings by Goodreads

9780330329798: A fez of the heart: Travels around Turkey in search of a hat

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0330329790 ISBN 13: 9780330329798

Publisher: Picador, 1995

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This is Jeremy Seal's quest, by means of a fez, for the heart of a country culturally and spiritually at odds with herself. The fez's opposing associations - both revered Eastern-Islamic headdress and banal tourist souvenir - exactly reflects Turkey's cultural faultline. While Turkey pays court to the EC and becomes the latest mecca for mass-tourism, the resurgent voices of Islamic traditionalism and Kurdish separatism are stark reminders of the country's complex cultural topography.

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Review:

Upon the orders of Kemal Ataturk, the fez replaced the turban as Turkey's national headdress. Outlawed completely in 1925, the turban is viewed as a symbol of Turkish backwardness. While living and teaching in Turkey for several years, Jeremy Seals developed an obsession for the fez, a hat he believes has come to symbolize the soul of the country. Through interviews with villagers and historical essays, Seals chronicles his journey through Turkey, to areas both metropolitan and remote, to find the heart of the country as embodied by its national head gear.

From the Back Cover:

Inspired by a dusty fez in his parents' attic, Jeremy Seal set off in 1993 to trace the astonishing history of this cone-shaped hat. Soon, the quintessentially Turkish headgear became the key to understanding a country beset by contradictions. Seal's investigations took him from the fez-topped headstones of Istanbul's ghostly cemeteries to the remote town on the Black Sea where Ataturk, the father of modern Turkey, first banned the fez in 1925. From there Seal traveled around the country, visiting eastern cities where intractable fez wearers were once hanged, exploring the troubled Kurdish southeast, watching the production of fez-shaped hats for whirling dervishes in the mystical central city of Konya. The result of his unusual journey is an engaging and agile mix of history and travel, politics and reportage.

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