The Turkish Lover

Enthralled admirers of Esmeralda Santiago's memoirs of her childhood have yearned to read more. Now, in The Turkish Lover, Esmeralda finally breaks out of the monumental struggle with her powerful mother, only to elope into the spell of an exotic love affair. At the heart of the story is Esmeralda's relationship with "the Turk," a passion that gradually becomes a prison out of which she must emerge to become herself. The expansive humanity, earthy humor, and psychological courage that made Esmeralda's first two books so successful are on full display again in The Turkish Lover.

Esmeralda Santiago's story begins in rural Puerto Rico, where her childhood was full of both tenderness and domestic strife, tropical sounds and sights as well as poverty. Growing up, she learned the proper way to eat a guava, the sound of tree frogs in the mango groves at night, the taste of the delectable sausage called morcilla, and the formula for ushering a dead baby's soul to heaven. As she enters school we see the clash, both hilarious and fierce, of Puerto Rican and Yankee culture. When her mother, Mami, a force of nature, takes off to New York with her seven, soon to be eleven children, Esmeralda, the oldest, must learn new rules, a new language, and eventually take on a new identity. In this first volume of her much-praised, bestselling trilogy, Santiago brilliantly recreates the idyllic landscape and tumultuous family life of her earliest years and her tremendous journey from the barrio to Brooklyn, from translating for her mother at the welfare office to high honors at Harvard.

Following the enchanting story recounted in When I Was Puerto Rican of the author’s emergence from the barrios of Brooklyn to the prestigious Performing Arts High School in Manhattan, Esmeralda Santiago delivers the tale of her young adulthood, where she continually strives to find a balance between becoming American and staying Puerto Rican. While translating for her mother Mami at the welfare office in the morning, starring as Cleopatra at New York’s prestigious Performing Arts High School in the afternoons, and dancing salsa all night, she begins to defy her mother’s protective rules, only to find that independence brings new dangers and dilemmas.

As a young girl growing up in Spain, Ana Larragoity Cubillas is powerfully drawn to Puerto Rico by the diaries of an ancestor who traveled there with Ponce de Leon. And in handsome twin brothers Ramon and Inocente—both in love with Ana—she finds a way to get there. Marrying Ramon at the age of eighteen, she travels across the ocean to Hacienda los Gemelos, a remote sugar plantation the brothers have inherited. But soon the Civil War erupts in the United States, and Ana finds her livelihood, and perhaps even her life, threatened by the very people on whose backs her wealth has been built: the hacienda’s slaves, whose richly drawn stories unfold alongside her own in this epic novel of love, discovery and adventure.

Take an evocative journey into the diverse cuisines and culinary customs of regional Turkey. Turkish food traverses the extremes of sophistication - from the refined cooking of the Ottoman court to the rustic simplicity of peasant food. Food and travel writer, Leanne Kitchen, has roamed the country armed with her camera, keen sense of observation and passion for all things culinary. From spicy red lentil kofte and slow-roasted lamb with pomegranate juice to rose cream meringues and Turkish coffee custard, Leanne unveils not just the inspiration for her collection of authentic and contemporary recipes but the very essence of Turkish hospitality.

The story of a tempestuous love affair—and the basis for Paul Verhoeven's Oscar-nominated film—Wolkers's controversial masterpiece comes alive in a new translation. Upon its original publication in 1969, Turkish Delight was a sensation and a scandal. Its graphic language and explicit sex scenes had an explosive effect, but just as revolutionary was its frank, colloquial style. The more straightlaced critics condemned the book, but readers saw a novel that reflected the way that they spoke, thought, and felt. Turkish Delight opens with a screed: a sculptor in his studio, raging against the love he lost and describing, in gory detail, the state of his life since she left him. Our narrator alternates between the story of his relationship with Olga—its passion and affection, but also its obsessiveness and abuse—and the dark days that followed, as he attempts to recapture what they had when they lived together, “happy as beasts.” The two only reunite during Olga’s inexorable and tragic decline into cancer—the chemo having taken her hair and rotted her teeth, she will only eat the soft, sweet Turkish Delight that her ex-lover brings to her bedside. In a new translation by Sam Garrett (Herman Koch’s The Dinner), readers get a sense of Wolkers’s revolutionary style and musical prose, Turkish Delight’s particular balance of naked impulse and profound longing. Tin House Books gratefully acknowledges the support of the Dutch Foundation for Literature, whose generous subsidy made this new translation possible.

América Gonzalez is a hotel housekeeper on an island off the coast of Puerto Rico, cleaning up after wealthy foreigners who don't look her In the eye. Her alcoholic mother resents her; her married boyfriend, Correa, beats her; and their fourteen-year-old daughter thinks life would be better anywhere but with América. So when América is offered the chance to work as alive-in housekeeper and nanny for a family in Westchester County, New York, she takes it as a sign that a door to escape has been opened. Yet even as América revels in the comparative luxury of her new life, daring to care about a man other than Correa, she is faced with dramatic proof that no matter what she does, she can't get away from her past.

Making Out in Turkish is a fun, accessible and thorough Turkish phrase book and guide to the Turkish language as it's really spoken. Sana hayranim! Seni tekrar ne zaman gorecegim?—(I adore you! When can I see you again?) Answer this correctly in Turkish and you may be going on a hot date. Incorrectly, and you could be hurting someone's feelings or getting a slap! Turkish classes and textbooks tend to spend a lot of time rehearsing for the same fictitious scenarios but chances are while in Turkey you will spend a lot more time trying to make new friends or start new romances—something you may not be prepared for. If you are a student, businessman or tourist traveling to Turkey and would like to have an authentic and meaningful experience, the key is being able to speak like a local. This friendly and easy-to-use Turkish phrasebook makes this possible. Making Out in Turkish has been carefully designed to act as a guide to modern colloquial Turkish for use in everyday informal interactions—giving access to the sort of catchy Turkish expressions that aren't covered in traditional language materials. Each expression is given in authentic Turkish (turkce) so that in the case of difficulties the book can be shown to the person the user is trying to communicate with. In addition, phonetic spellings are also included making speaking Turkish a breeze. For example "Okay"—Tamam, is also given as ta-MAHM. This Turkish phrasebook includes: A guide to pronouncing Turkish words correctly. Explanations of basic Turkish grammar, such as, double letters, vowel harmony, agglutination, questions, and negation. Complete Turkish translations including phonetic spellings. Useful and interesting notes on Turkish language and culture. Lots of colorful, fun and useful expressions not covered in other phrasebooks. Titles in this unique series of bestselling phrase books include: Making Out in Chinese, Making Out in Indonesian, Making Out in Thai, Making Out in Korean, Making Out in Hindi, Making Out in Japanese, Making Out in Vietnamese, Making Out in Burmese, Making Out in Tagalog, Making Out in Hindi, Making Out in Arabic, Making Out in English, More Making Out in Korean, and More Making Out in Japanese.