Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Turkish Short Stories From Four Decades

Author: Aziz Nesin

These are folk tales from Turkey. Most of them are interesting, though some of them have a sad ending which I didn't expect in a folk tale. I've read a couple of folk tale books from India and they either have a happy ending or a moral to teach you in the end. This is what I found missing in some of these stories but overall they were nice.

Those who've read folk tales in the past must've noticed that they tend to have a typical blueprint. For example, let's say they start with a person A leaving his home for destination X. On the way he meets B (where B could be a person, animal or a situation) as a result of which his circumstances change in some way. Going further on he meets C which again change his circumstance. In this way he meets N number of these till he reaches his destination and hence gets drastically transformed: he might be very poor when he started but very rich by the time he reaches his destination. So on and so forth.

It makes a good subject for light reading.

Bottomline: A good read.

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