Difficult reading, but an extremely well-written political statement about Turkey—not just then, but as it is now.
Actor, playwright and novelist Bogosian (Perforated Heart, 2009, etc.) retells the horrors of the Turkish attempt to eradicate the Armenians: the century’s first ethnic cleansing.
The Ottoman Empire was primarily Muslim but mostly tolerated Jews and the Christian Armenians. However, they were treated as second-class citizens, required to pay extra taxes, never eligible for public office and banned from intermarriage. In an attempt to modernize, a group of “Young Turks” allied with the Armenian Revolutionary Federation in 1908 to overthrow the empire. Though it was a bloodless coup, it soon became apparent that the Young Turks had no need for the Armenians. The country was ruled by the Committee of Union and Progress, a government as ruthless and cruel as the old sultan. The CUP was led by a triumvirate of Djemal Pasha, Talaat Pasha and Enver Pasha; by 1913, any semblance of democracy was lost. Then, in late April 1915, prominent Armenian leaders were rounded up and disappeared. This was the beginning of the genocide about which Hitler said, “[W]ho remembers the Armenians?” The killings, massacres, torture and deportations of Armenians went on through World War I. War-crime trials by the occupying British were ineffectual. Bogosian explores the life of survivor Soghomon Tehlirian, a young man who was fixated on revenge for the deaths of his people. In 1919, the ARF approved a “special mission” called Nemesis to find and execute the guilty parties, and Tehlirian was the perfect man for their mission. He found Pasha in Berlin and killed him, then stood trial, thereby bringing the world’s attention to the fate of the Armenians. The author gives a clear, concise view of Turkey’s history in the 20th century, and it’s not pretty.
Difficult reading, but an extremely well-written political statement about Turkey—not just then, but as it is now.Pub Date: April 21, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-316-29208-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Jan. 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
