Book Description
A tale of high adventure and lyrical celebration, tenderness and violence, generosity and ruthlessness, Memed, My Hawk is the defining achievement of one of the greatest and most beloved of living writers, Yashar Kemal. It is reissued here with a new introduction by the author on the fiftieth anniversary of its first publication.

Memed, a high-spirited, kindhearted boy, grows up in a desperately poor mountain village whose inhabitants are kept in virtual slavery by the local landlord. Determined to escape from the life of toil and humiliation to which he has been born, he flees but is caught, tortured, and nearly killed. When at last he does get away, it is to set up as a roving brigand, celebrated in song, who could be a liberator to his people—unless, like the thistles that cover the mountain slopes of his native region, his character has taken an irremediably harsh and unforgiving form. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (27)

An Eastern Western
This is a shoot-up in the old Zane Grey style......lots of swash and buckle. The setting may be the rugged outback of Anatolia in the 1920's but the plot is pure horse-opera. Scarcely worth the time of day for a grownup, alas.

John Truman NYC

The voice of south Anatolian village story teller
This is Yashar Kemal's (1922-present) first novel, originally published in 1955.He is one of the best read Turkish writers.The lucid translation into English is by Edouard Roditi, the author of The Delights of Turkey: Twenty Tales.Kemal's story draws on his childhood as a Kurd in a poor southern Anatolian village of hard-laboring share-croppers.

The twin strengths of the story are its sense of place and of identification with Memed, its bandit hero.Abdi Agha, the village landlord, collects two-thirds of farmers' hard won harvest and otherwise rules as a local despot.Abdi Agha singles out Memed and his widowed mother for abuse.Memed rebels and flees to the nearby Taurus Mountains, where he becomes a bandit.His struggle is for dignity but also for violent revenge.Despite this violent urge, Memed mostly avoids violence, and seeks to treat most enemies as well as friends with compassion.

In the end, the story of Memed, son of Ibrahim the Miserable, is about triumph of the oppressed against the arbitrary.It's not realistic, it's a fantasy.Yet the story serves a purpose: in his introduction, Kemal affirms that:

"By creating myths, by conjuring up worlds of dreams, one can withstand the great suffering of the world..."

Kemal writes with clear avuncular voice of a village story teller, speaking to children of his native village, in the dry heat of a clear Mediterranean evening.The tale is full of light, illuminating his landscape of home.This is a landscape of hard earth, of fields of thistle, below the foothills of the Taurus Mountains, some miles inland from the Mediterranean coast of Turkey.In nearly every passage, the reader feels this sense of belonging, the sense of familiar soil, something that it's hard for me to find within, except sometimes when I remember the smell and color of leaves, scattered in my path to elementary school, on a brisk October day in Philadelphia.This is how Kemal describes his home:

"Only beyond the low hilltops crowned with heavy-scented myrtle do the rocks suddenly appear, and with them the pine trees.The crystal-bright drops of resin ooze from the trunks and trickle down to the ground.Beyond the pines are plateaus where the soil is gray and arid.From here it looks as if the snow-capped peaks of the Taurus are very close, almost within arms reach.

Dikenli, the Plateau of Thistles, is one of these highland plains, with five small villages clustered on it.The inhabitants of all five are tenant farmers, on Abdi Agha's Land.Dikenli is a world by itself, with its own laws and customs.."

Read on.

Breathtaking
This book is certainly an exhilarating page-turner!But not merely this:Lush descriptions of the Turkish countryside as it existed at the time, a cast of characters Tolstoyan in their sweep, and, above all, an epic story of a downtrodden hero---In short, the book is a Romance.It is not, though, the simple-minded, pat story that one sometimes associates with this term.It is a Romance in the sense that War and Peace and Don Quixote are Romances.The author goes to some pains in the introduction to explain why he has written this sort of book, instead of something dry and dispiriting as many of the works of, say, V. S .Naipaul are. If I could sum up these arguments, it would be that such a work as Memed, My Hawk touches on what is written in every human heart. And it does.It is ribald, comic, sad, distressing, heartbreaking---all the emotions, which, blended together, make up a human life.It is also, of course, more specifically, about a particular human named Memed, who embodies these traits in an heroic fashion. -I don't think that it belittles this book a jot to compare it to the movie Braveheart.I found myself reminded of this cinematic work more than anything else throughout the book---There are so many thematic and plot similarities.Let's put it this way, if you love Braveheart, you will love this book.But also, if you love War and Peace or Don Quixote, you will love this book.And I say, good and well, let's have the old pathos and lyricism back that made literature what it is. Let's not leave it to the dry hacks who warn us, like so many bloodless Jeremiahs, of the perils of following our hearts.Let's let literature be literature! ---But never mind me.Let's let Kemal have the last word:

"No matter how limited a man's field of vision, his imagination knows no bounds.A man who has never been outside his village of Deyirmenoluk can still create a whole imaginary world that can reach as far as the stars.Without travelling, a man can penetrate to the other end of the world.Even without much imagination the place where he dwells can become different in his dreams, a true paradise." P.77

So, go. Read and Dream!

Best epic written in history of mankind
Memed, my hawk is nothing short of a revelation. It is the first instalment of four books and the final instalment was written more than twenty after the first one. I, being from
Turkey, had not read this book until i was 24 years old, certainly much later than I had read the works of Tolstoy, Soholov, Chaucer, Steinbeck etc. But this book was completely
in a league of its own. The first one was spectacular, but the second, third and fourth simply unbeatable. For all the comparisons made with Robin Hood ,Don Kichote and other great
literary achievements (all appreciated), nevertheless this is
- believe me - the finest any writer has ever produced. The great author Yasar Kemal has produced many fine works since 1953, when the book was first published; but all of them will be eclipsed by this book, which reads so fresh more than 50 years after it is written. Memed, My Hawk is to literature what 24 is to TV or what Les Miserables is to theatre.
A life changing book if ever there was one. READ!!!!

studying in turkey this fall, discovering the literature
I was mesmerized by this book. It looked like a dusty old classic on the libary shelf, and, being insanely motivated by all things Turkish in my excitement to study there, I picked it up and started to read anyway.PLEASE read this book!! It is beautiful!! The descriptions of the plains reminds me of rural Ohio, making me feel some ease at the prospect of my new local. However, the eye for the Turkish countryside could belong only to a native like Kemal!! And the story is fast-paced and brilliant, never, ever leaving the reader bored. Such a joy to read, inspiring, makes one happy to be human-being, somewhere capable of great feats or the ability to recognize them.... AMAZING!! ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

The unending story
I readily confess that I've only read this, the third volume of a 3 part series.So, of course, I might have missed a lot of the nuances I could have picked up if I'd read things in order.However, it is the author's responsibility to make each book understandable in itself, not dependent on prior volumes.But don't anticipate my comments---I am not going to say that this novel is incomprehensible.THE UNDYING GRASS is a part of Yashar Kemal's giant body of work and in it we see many of the same elements at work: sympathetic treatment of Turkey's working people, depiction of feudal injustice, the tragic results of ignorance, man's struggle with nature, and the natural world of the Chukurova, that semi-legendary (as presented in Kemal's work) area in southern Anatolia where most of his stories take place.The time, as usual, is a little vague.In the background are American jet planes taking off from Incirlik airbase, Mercedes Benz', mention of Red China and even Fidel Castro---so it has to be the 1960s--- but nothing whatsoever of the modern world penetrates the lives of our characters, who seem stuck in the early Ataturk era.

What I will say is that every author has a bad day, maybe makes an unfortunate collection of choices.Perhaps this novel represents one of those times.It is too long, it is too slow.I felt that having developed these characters over two previous novels, Kemal did not want to drop them, but did not know what to do with them.Their thoughts, feelings, and actions are repeated over and over.Memedik wants to kill the Muhtar, but how many shadows does he fear, how many slashes of his willow knife in the air do we see ?Old Meryemdje survives in the village by herself, wishing for company, plotting to catch a rooster while Omer the orphan has been sent to kill her for reasons the reader of this third volume cannot readily understand.Long Ali regrets leaving his mother back in the mountain village---he regrets and regrets and regrets, but does nothing.Tashbash, the martyr-saint, very Christ-like, it seemed to me, goes up and down in villagers' estimation like a yo-yo. Points are not only made, they are hammered home. Everything is drawn out; steel green flies gather countless times, the saint is beaten and then revered and then beaten again, clouds of mosquitoes plague the cotton-picking villagers in the endless plain again and again, eagles (hope or fate or the possibility of redemption) soar overhead in almost every chapter.No, I'm sorry.Kemal has written some excellent novels and I've reviewed them too.This one should have been cut by a lot.It isn't one of his best.

Truly Wonderful
A fitting and devastating finale to his trilogy. Kemal explores in "The Wind from the Plain" series the goodness, evil, and drive for self-destruction that is immanent in all humanity. In his analysis andhilarious tales of man's constant need for deification and iconoclasm,Kemal has shown that if anyone deserves to be one of the greatest writersfrom Turkey and the Middle East, he is the one. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Anatolian Tales
This collection of short stories seems to vividly capture the essence of life in rural Turkey.It is a dog's life, often times brutal and tragic.Yet, each tale has a veiled moral that reflects the good nature of the people.

I am living in Turkey at the moment and I see things that seem so unjust, so inhumane on a daily basis.And yet, I personally experience such warmth and goodness from most people.This book helped me to see deeper into what is goes on around me.I think I now understand why most people have a can't do attitude.

One of my Turkish friends put it as gently as she could, that Kemal is considered a Communist.The lady who recommended the book said her maid, who is a Kurd, was thrilled to see she was reading it.

Anatolian Tales
Yasar Kemal is one of the best Turkish novel writers. Perhaps he is the most known writer around Europe as a Turkish writer.Anatolian Tales is Yasar Kemal's one of the best books. In this book there are three storieswhich are written in an interesting way.These three stories passes aroundthe main land of Turkey in Anatolia. They are tales. There are somewritings explaining the tradition in the time of Ottoman Empire inAnatolia. I think this book is a "must read" for Turkish peopleand all others who areinterested in beautiful lands of Anatolia...

Anatolian Tales
Yasar Kemal is one of the best Turkish novel writers. Perhaps he is the most known writer around Europe as a Turkish writer.Anatolian Tales is Yasar Kemal's one of the best books. In this book there are three storieswhich are written in an interesting way.These three stories passes aroundthe main land of Turkey in Anatolia. They are tales. There are somewritings explaining the tradition in the time of Ottoman Empire inAnatolia. I think this book is a "must read" for Turkish peopleand all others who areinterested in beautiful lands of Anatolia... ... Read more