Halide's Gift: A Novel - Hardcover

Kazan, Frances

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0375505113 ISBN 13: 9780375505119

Publisher: Random House, 2001

Synopsis

Set in magical, mystical Constantinople in the closing years of the nineteenth century, Halide's Gift is the story of a family with a secret, and a society in turbulent transition. At the heart of this beguiling novel are two sisters—one flamboyant and mischievous, the other shy and full of dreams—bound by an extraordinary friendship who will be torn apart by their love of radically different men.

Selima Edib, the aristocratic wife of the sultan's first secretary, bequeaths to her daughter Halide her passionate spirit and her gift—a power nursed within the family for generations, passed on from mother to daughter, and never revealed to outsiders: the power to see and commune with the spirits of the dead. Halide's gift leaves her torn between the spiritual, tradition-bound world of her grandmother and the intellectual world of her father, a deeply conflicted man who defies the sultan's edict to give his daughter the education of a Western woman, despite his loyalty to the regime.

As the story unfolds, Sultan Abdul Hamid plots, through his spies and informers, to crush the increasingly vocal opposition, leaving Halide and her sister, Mahmoure, on either side of a dangerous political divide.

About this title

About the Author

Frances Kazan is the wife of the director Elia Kazan. She is the author of Goodnight, Little Sisters, a novel, has an M.A. in Turkish studies, and is a regular contributor to Cornucopia. A member of the Society for Women Geographers, she is board president of The Kitchen, a performance center in Chelsea. She lives in New York.

From the Back Cover

"Like an intricately patterned Turkish carpet, Halide's Gift is a complex tale of intrigue, secrets, superstitions and veiled passions set at the end of nineteenth century Constantinople, a time when change chafes against tradition and a place where East and West rub elbows. With a wealth of exotic detail resulting from meticulous research, Frances Kazan's sensuous writing draws us into the multi-layered life of a harem and two sisters whose different natures push against ancient proprieties, each in her own way, crystalizing the forces in turbulent conflict. She has turned unknown history into compelling human drama." — Susan Vreeland, author of GIRL IN HYACINTH BLUE

"A memorable read: heartfelt, historical, richly realistic."—Kirkus Reviews

"I was gripped by Frances Kazan's evocation of the last days of the Ottoman empire in Halide's Gift. That strange, fragile world of complex intrigues and compromises is made fully present through her scrupulous attention to individual lives and psychological truth. An impressive novel." — Pankaj Mishra, author of THE ROMANTICS

"Halide's Gift tells the story of a remarkable woman's life as it unfolds in the last years of the Ottoman Empire. The outer world of politics and society forms a wonderful counterpoint to the steady growth and maturation of this inspiring woman's inner life. Frances Kazan has given us in this radiant novel not only her rich insight into these incredible times, but also a new heroine whom we can admire and from whom there is so much to learn." — Philip Glass

"This is an enchanting, engrossing novel. Frances Kazan has taken Halide Edib's true story — her amazing moment in Turkey's history — and with an alchemy of art and scholarship has turned it into the kind of fiction that illuminates a world." — Jane Kramer

"HALIDE'S GIFT will haunt you. The story is both moving and mysterious—the women passionate, complicated and noble. Frances Kazan is a writer of exceptional promise." — Patricia Bosworth

From the Inside Flap

al, mystical Constantinople in the closing years of the nineteenth century, <b>Halide's Gift</b> is the story of a family with a secret, and a society in turbulent transition. At the heart of this beguiling novel are two sisters―one flamboyant and mischievous, the other shy and full of dreams―bound by an extraordinary friendship who will be torn apart by their love of radically different men. <br><br>Selima Edib, the aristocratic wife of the sultan's first secretary, bequeaths to her daughter Halide her passionate spirit and her gift―a power nursed within the family for generations, passed on from mother to daughter, and never revealed to outsiders: the power to see and commune with the spirits of the dead. Halide's gift leaves her torn between the spiritual, tradition-bound world of her grandmother and the intellectual world of her father, a deeply conflicted man who defies the sultan's edict to give his daughter the education of a Western woman, despite his loyalty to t

Reviews

We can't go back to Constantinople, but in this fictionalized biography Halide Edib teaches us much about women's lives in that eastern metropolis at the turn of the century. Although didactic (a chunk of history is dropped abruptly into the middle), the book is not without interest in its forays into closely guarded harems, the large country houses of well-to-do Turkish families, the European quarter, and on a sadly contemporary note a camp for refugees from nationalist fighting in the Balkans. Halide Edib, daughter of a bureaucrat at the court of the last sultan of the Ottoman Empire, displays intellectual talent at an early age. After her mother's death, her European-leaning father sees to it that she receives a first-class education: first from her Circassian governess (later stepmother) Teyze and then as the first Turkish student at the American Girls College. Born into a Muslim family whose members pride themselves on being direct descendants of "Eyoub, the standard-bearer of the Prophet," Halide has inherited the family gift, an ability to hear the voices of the spirits of the dead. Her grandmother, who shares that gift, is firmly set in traditional ways and worries that Halide will lose her faith as she is exposed to Western influences. Devoted to the mystical poetry of the Sufis as well as to her growing ability to write English fiction, Halide attempts to walk the tightrope between West and East, even as she see others like her half-sister Mahmoure, who abandons her arranged marriage and her children for her lover (and Edib's former prot?g?), Riza come to grief in the attempt. This second novel (after Goodnight, Little Sisters) is old-fashioned and its style undistinguished; however, its portrayal of an Islamic world on the brink of change is carefully detailed and convincing. (July 3) FYI: Kazan is the wife of director Elia Kazan.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

This fictional account of the life of Halide Edib is an initiation into nineteenth-century Turkey under Sultan Abdul Hamid--a world where women are uneducated, confined to harems, and required to accept polygamy. When her mother dies, little Halide is cared for by a devoted Muslim grandmother, who nurtures the child's gift of hearing and seeing the dead, an endowment that has passed to every woman in her mother's line of descent. Despite his position as first secretary to the sultan, Halide's father rejects social conformity and frees his daughter from the bondage of illiteracy by defying the edicts of the sultan and sending her to the American school for girls, where she becomes one of the first formally educated Turkish women in history. Kazan has written a politically intriguing and uniquely stylized novel with a subject matter that is refreshingly untrodden. A master of Turkish studies, she conveys this story with the mystique of billowing incense. Elsa Gaztambide
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Sitting in the Senior Library, Halide went over the facts in her mind. She shuffled the truths and arranged them piece by piece, so that they balanced like locum on the great brass scales at Haci Bekir's sweet shop. Here was the Sultan, God's representative on earth. Her father, grandparents, and their grandparents before them were an integral part of the Imperial order. Here were the guardians of Eyoub and beneath them the chief coffee makers, sweet makers, and rabbit dancers. It had always been this way, forever.

Edition details

• Publisher: Random House
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0375505113
• ISBN 13: 9780375505119
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 368