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Summary
Summary
A young Turkish man journeys back in time and across continents in search of a stranger who will forever alter the way he sees himself, his family and his country. When Orhan's brilliant and eccentric grandfather-a man who built a dynasty out of making kilim rugs-is found dead, submerged in a vat of dye, Orhan inherits the decades-old business. But his grandfather's will raises more questions than answers. Kemal has left the family estate to a stranger, thousands of miles away, an aging woman in an Armenian retirement home in Los Angeles. Her existence and secrecy about her past only deepen the mystery of why Orhan's grandfather would have willed their home in Turkey to an unknown woman rather than to his own son or grandson. Left with only Kemal's ancient sketchbook and intent on righting this injustice, Orhan boards a plane to Los Angeles. There, over many meetings, he will not only unearth the story that 87-year-old Seda so closely guards, but discover that Seda's past now threatens to unravel his future. It's a story that, if told, has the power to undo the legacy upon which his family is built. Moving back and forth in time, between the last years of the Ottoman Empire and the 1990s, Orhan's Inheritance is a story of passionate love, unspeakable horrors, incredible resilience, and the hidden stories that haunt a family.
Reviews (4)
Kirkus Review
In Ohanesian's debut novel, a Turkish man confronts secrets about his family and his country's history and is faced with an impossible choice: Should the past remain in the past, or should all stories, even the most painful, come to light? When his grandfather dies, Orhan returns from Istanbul to the small village where he grew up and the contentious relationship he shares with his father; the tension is exacerbated when his grandfather's will reveals that he has left the family dye business to Orhan and the family house to a strange woman in an Armenian-American nursing home. While the rest of the nursing home prepares for an exhibit called "Bearing Witness: An Exhibit About Memory and Identity," Seda at first refuses to talk to Orhan about her connection to his grandfather. When she finally unburdens herself, giving voice to a harrowing tale of unimaginable sacrifice, he must decide what to do with this new information about his family and about the horrors of his country's history. In a complex balance, Ohanesian often condemns language as insufficient to convey these stories of loss and pain, while at the same time recognizing that telling the story can be cathartic and even universally necessary. The heart of the novel seems to suggest that "[t]here is only what is, what happened. The words come much later, corrupting everything with meaning." There are deep reflections on guilt, both collective and individual, and the power of memory to destroy or to heal. By rejecting the power of the written word but also, in writing a novel, relying on it to be powerful, Ohanesian explores both sides of this argument about bearing witness to Turkey's terrible legacy. A novel that delves into the darkest corners of human history and emerges with a tenuous sense of hope. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Stretching back and forth through time over the course of the twentieth century, Ohanesian's heartrending debut chronicles the painful odyssey of one family against the broader backdrop of the Armenian genocide. When his grandfather, a successful Turkish businessman, dies, Orhan travels back to his native village, where he learns that his grandfather has unexpectedly willed his textile business to him, rather than to his father. Even more distressing than this humiliating break with tradition is the fact that the family's ancestral home has been left to an unknown woman residing in an Armenian American nursing home in Los Angeles. Commissioned to travel to the U.S. to meet this woman and get her to sign over the house to his father, Orhan is compelled to unravel the mystery of his grandfather's past and his family's role in a shameful period of his country's history. Ohanesian does a remarkable job of conveying the weight and the influence of time and place without excusing or excluding the human dimension that necessarily factors into the unfolding cataclysm.--Flanagan, Margaret Copyright 2015 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
STOKELY: A Life, by Peniel E. Joseph. (BasicCivitas, $18.99.) After the deaths of Malcolm X and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Stokely Carmichael, who embodied the black power movement, was considered an heir apparent in the battle for civil rights. His life is a crucial, if sometimes overlooked, part of the "route black America took to its present understanding of itself and its complex relationship to this country," our reviewer, William Jelani Cobb, wrote. THE HARDER THEY COME, by T. Coraghessan Boyle. (Ecco/HarperCollins, $15.99.) Boyle's novel explores the noxious combination of anger, paranoia and power through the stories of three characters: Sten, a Vietnam War veteran hailed as a hero after killing a robber in Central America; Adam, Sten's mentally ill son with a propensity for violence; and Sara, Adam's lover, who is also a member of an anarchist group. After Adam shoots two people and flees, a manhunt ensues, and leads Sten to reconsider how best to relate to his son. ORDINARY LIGHT: A Memoir, by Tracy K. Smith. (Vintage, $16.) Smith, a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, reflects on the forces that shaped her, including her childhood years in Northern California, an early visit to relatives in Alabama, and her literary influences. At the heart of the memoir is Smith's fierce bond with her mother, and her reflections on her identity as a black American and a woman. THE VILLAGE, by Nikita Lalwani. (Random House, $16.) In Lalwani's second novel, a young BBC documentary filmmaker and her bickering crew travel to a small Indian village, Ashwer, in pursuit of her next topic. The town is an experimental "prison village," where violent criminals are permitted to live with their families and are allowed to seek daywork outside the village confines. THE DELUGE: The Great War, America and the Remaking of the Global Order, 1916-1931, by Adam Tooze. (Penguin, $20.) This account depicts the time in history before American power became, as Gary J. Bass wrote here, "the defining political fact of the modern world." Tooze's history begins mid-war, and traces how the United States outstripped its European counterparts, leveraging its growing economic power into military might. ORHAN'S INHERITANCE, by Aline Ohanesian. (Algonquin, $15.95.) After Kemal, the protagonist's grandfather, dies in 1990, his family is puzzled by a mysterious woman named in his will: Kemal left her the family's home in Turkey. When Orhan, his grandson, delves into Kemal's past, he soon discovers a story of ill-fated love during the Armenian genocide. SPEAK NOW. Marriage Equality on Trial: The Story of Hollingsworth v. Perry, by Kenji Yoshino. (Broadway, $17.) Yoshino chronicles the landmark 2010 trial that struck down the ban on same-sex marriage in California, and considers its far-ranging legal, and personal, ramifications. As he writes: "I speak in this book not only as an expert in constitutional law but also as a human being who has lived it."
Library Journal Review
Ohanesian's debut follows two families-one Turkish, one Armenian-from the end of the Ottoman Empire to the 1990s in this harrowing story of death, life, love, sacrifice, resilience, and hope. Learning that his grandfather left their ancestral home to an Armenian stranger in a California retirement home, Orhan searches for answers to questions raised by his grandfather's will, only to discover that the woman beneficiary had no legal relationship to him or his father-possibly voiding the will under existing Turkish law. Orhan's research also introduces him to the Turks' and Armenians' turbulent history and the Armenian genocide. Assaf Cohen's professional, emotive reading draws in listeners. VERDICT This will appeal to fiction listeners with an international and historical bent. ["Ohanesian's beautifully written debut brings to life a historic tragedy that Turkey still denies ever happened.... Moving and unforgettable": LJ 4/15/15 starred review of the Algonquin hc.]-Laurie Selwyn, formerly with Grayson Cty. Law Lib., Sherman, TX © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
They found him inside one of seventeen cauldrons in the courtyard, steeping in an indigo dye two shades darker than the summer sky. His arms and chin were propped over the copper edge, but the rest of Kemal Türkoglu, age ninety-three, had turned a pretty pale blue. Orhan was told the old men of the village stood in front of the soaking corpse, fingering their worry beads, while their sons waited, holding dice from abandoned backgammon games. Modesty forbade any female spectators, but within hours the news spread from one kitchen and vendor's stall to the next. Orhan's grandfather, his dede, had immersed his body, naked except for his britches, into a vat of fabric dye outside their family home. Orhan sinks into the backseat of the private car, a luxury he talked himself into when the dread of a seven-hour bus ride back to the village started to overwhelm his grief. He wanted to mourn in private, away from the chickens, the elderly, the traveling merchants, or worse yet, the odd acquaintance that could normally be found on a bus ride to Anatolia, the interior of Turkey. He told himself he could afford a little luxury now, but the car showed up an hour late, sporting a broken air conditioner and a driver reeking of cheap cologne and sweat. Orhan lights a cigarette and shuts his eyes against the sting of the man's body odor. "Going to visit your family?" the driver asks. "Yes," answers Orhan. "That's nice. So many young people leave their villages and never come back," he says. The truth is it's been three years since his last visit. Had Dede had the good sense to move out of that godforsaken place, there would be no reason to go back. The car veers off the highway, making its way along a recently paved road toward the city of Sivas, on whose outskirts Karod village is located. The driver slows down and opens a window, letting the terroir -laden scent of soil waft into the car's cavity. Unlike Istanbul, whose majesty is reflected in the Bosporus, Central Anatolia is the quintessential other Turkey, in which allusions of majesty or progress are much harder to come by. Here shepherds follow the bleating of long-haired goats, and squat village women carry bundles of kindling on their backs. Time and progress are two long-lost relatives who send an occasional letter. The ancient roads of Sivas Province, once a part of the famed Silk Road, have seen the stomping of Assyrian, Persian, Greek, and Roman feet. Dry-rotted timber, blocks of concrete, and sheets of corrugated tin stand feebly upon ancient Byzantine stone structures whose architectural complexity suggests a more glorious past. Layer upon layer of earth and civilization washed downstream by the muddy waters of the Kizil Irmak, the Red River, produces a kind of sedimentary aesthetic. Orhan thinks of the unbearable heat of Anatolian summers acting as an adhesive for all these different layers. "You have siblings?" the driver asks. "No," answers Orhan. "Just your parents then?" he asks, glancing at Orhan through the rearview mirror. "Father, grandfather, and an aunt," he says, looking out at the barren landscape. How is it that even without a single structure weighing down on it, the land is heavy, the atmosphere so pressed it makes it hard to breathe? It was these very fields, burdened with a history he could not name, that first inspired him to pick up Dede's Leica. Somewhere around age fifteen, Orhan discovered that if he blurred the image in the lens enough, Karod would no longer threaten to crush him. Through the lens, the slopes and valleys of his childhood started to resemble abstract paintings, broad strokes of yellow and green, hidden patches of lavender, set against an ever-changing sky of blue and orange. It was only later that he realized he was imposing meaning upon the world by the way he chose to capture it. Those first photographs were like butterflies suspended in glass panes. "I grew up near Sivas," the driver continues. "What's your family name? Maybe I know it." There is no escaping this constant need for placing one another in Turkey. It's one of the few things Orhan loved about living in Germany: the anonymity. "Türkoglu," he says finally. The driver's expression, framed in the rearview mirror, changes. "I'm sorry for your loss," he says. "Kemal Bey was an extraordinary man. Is it true he fought at Ctesiphon?" Orhan nods, taking another drag from his cigarette. "They don't make them like that anymore. That generation was full of real men. They fought against all of Europe and Russia, established a republic, and founded entire industries. It's something, huh?" "Yes," agrees Orhan. "It's something." "The paper says he immersed himself in dye for medicinal purposes," the driver says. It's not the first time Orhan has heard this preposterous theory. It's a story crafted, no doubt, by his cunning little aunt. Though Dede had been a well-respected World War I hero-turned-businessman, he was also an eccentric man, living in a place where eccentricities needed to be explained away or covered up. In villages like Karod, every person, object, and stone has to have some sort of covering, a layer of protection made from cloth, brick, or dust. Men and women cover their heads with skullcaps and head scarves. These standards of modesty also apply to their animals, their speech, their ideas. Why should Dede's death be an exception? The car veers left onto a loosely graveled road that leads into the village. Orhan searches for the wooden post that used to announce the village's name in unassuming hand-painted white letters, but it's nowhere to be found. A young boy in a bright orange shirt and green shorts walks behind a herd of cows. He sweeps a long stick at their backs, ushering them into one of many narrow corridors sandwiched between mud-caked houses. "Is this it?" asks the driver. "Yes," says Orhan. "Just follow this road until you see the house with the large columns." The sound of crunching gravel comes to a halt as the car stops. Orhan extinguishes his cigarette and steps out. He can hear the singular sound of hired wailers, their practiced percussion luring him out of the car: two, maybe three female voices filled with a kind of sorrow and vulnerability that comes only with practice. The two-story family home is a dilapidated old ruin by any standards, but here in the forgotten back pocket of Central Anatolia, it is considered a sturdy and grand affair. A thin film of mustard-colored stucco advances and retreats over hand-cut stones of putty and gray, reminding Orhan of a half-peeled piece of dried-out fruit. The Victorian-looking house, complete with parlor and basement, is the birthplace of Tarik Inc., which began as a small collection of workshops and which, over the past six decades, grew into an automated firm, exporting textiles as far away as Italy and Germany. Here, inside these ruinous walls, according to family legend, Orhan's great-grandfather had woven a kilim for the sultan himself. That was before the empire became a republic, before democracy and Westernization revolutionized what it meant to be a Turk. In the courtyard to the left of the house, the massive copper cauldrons stand guarding the wilting structure. Through the decades they've gone from holding fabric dye to sheltering children playing hide-and-seek to storing the discarded ashes of hookah pipes and cigarettes. These vessels have contained the many bits and pieces of Dede's life. Perhaps it is only fitting that they also housed his last breath. Orhan weaves a familiar path around the cauldrons. All empty, except one holding a murky sledgelike dye that looks more black than blue, the color of a good-bye. Excerpted from Orhan's Inheritance by Aline Ohanesian All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.