Customer Reviews

The Girl from the Golden Horn

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"The Girl from the Golden Horn" is an insightful novel about two mismatched but well-meaning people. Asiadeh, an upper class Turkish girl living in European exile meets a Hasa, a Viennese doctor. They fall in love, marry, and try to overcome the cultural differences between them, He cannot comprehend her "wild" Turkish nature, and she cannot understand his "modern" outlook, let alone the behavior of his friends. Always in the background are Asiadeh's sense of duty to the Ottoman prince to whom she was betrothed as a child and and Hasa's memories of his unfaithful ex-wife. Although Said wrote the book specifically about expatriate Muslims in a Christian Europe, there is much about the loss of the past and the longing for home that transcends the specific characters and situations. The story is told with wit and lyricism and is a good read for anyone trying to understand the dislocations of losing one's homeland and culture.

After reading THE ORIENTALIST I was interested in reading some of Kurban Said's fiction. ALI AND NINO was not available, so I picked up THE GIRL FROM THE GOLDEN HORN. This is a very peculiar book, I think. The heroine is an intelligent young female member of the exiled Turkish royal family studying Oriental languages in Weimar Berlin. She attracts the attention of a recently divorced young doctor who woos her. I was appalled when she writes a letter to the missing prince she was betrothed to stating that she wants nothing more than to be his slave and wash his feet, but if she does not hear from him, she will marry the doctor. I just don't understand this sensibility. But as I continued reading I felt that I gained some insight into the mentality of the Muslim woman. The novel is at its best when it depicts the woman navigating her way through an alien culture that is extremely decadent in comparison to her upbringing. Although I could not identify with her, I did understand her sense of displacement and did empathize with her during a painful chapter when she feels that she is a complete outsider at a social engagement. I think we've all been there at one time or another. Said captured the experience quite well. I guess the novel would best be described as a romance novel for intellectuals. It has many elements of a romance novel: a mysterious playboy prince, a rich and handsome young doctor, exotic locations in Europe, North Africa and Asia, costume balls, posh resorts and an attempted rape. But the heroine is an intellectual able to discuss religion, philosophy, history, anthropology and medicine in numerous languages. This is not the usual milieu of the romance genre. As a novel, it is far too dependent upon coincidence to be considered a first-rate work, but I nonetheless found it an interesting and insightful reading experience.