Halide's Gift: A Novel [Hardcover]

Frances Kazan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 26, 2001

Set in magical, mystical Constantinople in the closing years of the nineteenth century, Halide's Gift is the story of a family with a secret, and a society in turbulent transition. At the heart of this beguiling novel are two sisters—one flamboyant and mischievous, the other shy and full of dreams—bound by an extraordinary friendship who will be torn apart by their love of radically different men.

Selima Edib, the aristocratic wife of the sultan's first secretary, bequeaths to her daughter Halide her passionate spirit and her gift—a power nursed within the family for generations, passed on from mother to daughter, and never revealed to outsiders: the power to see and commune with the spirits of the dead. Halide's gift leaves her torn between the spiritual, tradition-bound world of her grandmother and the intellectual world of her father, a deeply conflicted man who defies the sultan's edict to give his daughter the education of a Western woman, despite his loyalty to the regime.

As the story unfolds, Sultan Abdul Hamid plots, through his spies and informers, to crush the increasingly vocal opposition, leaving Halide and her sister, Mahmoure, on either side of a dangerous political divide.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

We can't go back to Constantinople, but in this fictionalized biography Halide Edib teaches us much about women's lives in that eastern metropolis at the turn of the century. Although didactic (a chunk of history is dropped abruptly into the middle), the book is not without interest in its forays into closely guarded harems, the large country houses of well-to-do Turkish families, the European quarter, and on a sadly contemporary note a camp for refugees from nationalist fighting in the Balkans. Halide Edib, daughter of a bureaucrat at the court of the last sultan of the Ottoman Empire, displays intellectual talent at an early age. After her mother's death, her European-leaning father sees to it that she receives a first-class education: first from her Circassian governess (later stepmother) Teyze and then as the first Turkish student at the American Girls College. Born into a Muslim family whose members pride themselves on being direct descendants of "Eyoub, the standard-bearer of the Prophet," Halide has inherited the family gift, an ability to hear the voices of the spirits of the dead. Her grandmother, who shares that gift, is firmly set in traditional ways and worries that Halide will lose her faith as she is exposed to Western influences. Devoted to the mystical poetry of the Sufis as well as to her growing ability to write English fiction, Halide attempts to walk the tightrope between West and East, even as she see others like her half-sister Mahmoure, who abandons her arranged marriage and her children for her lover (and Edib's former prot?g?), Riza come to grief in the attempt. This second novel (after Goodnight, Little Sisters) is old-fashioned and its style undistinguished; however, its portrayal of an Islamic world on the brink of change is carefully detailed and convincing. (July 3) FYI: Kazan is the wife of director Elia Kazan.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

This fictional account of the life of Halide Edib is an initiation into nineteenth-century Turkey under Sultan Abdul Hamid--a world where women are uneducated, confined to harems, and required to accept polygamy. When her mother dies, little Halide is cared for by a devoted Muslim grandmother, who nurtures the child's gift of hearing and seeing the dead, an endowment that has passed to every woman in her mother's line of descent. Despite his position as first secretary to the sultan, Halide's father rejects social conformity and frees his daughter from the bondage of illiteracy by defying the edicts of the sultan and sending her to the American school for girls, where she becomes one of the first formally educated Turkish women in history. Kazan has written a politically intriguing and uniquely stylized novel with a subject matter that is refreshingly untrodden. A master of Turkish studies, she conveys this story with the mystique of billowing incense. Elsa Gaztambide
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Random House; 1st edition (June 26, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375505113
• ISBN-13: 978-0375505119
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.3 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,459,977 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Congratulations, Mrs. Kazan!, November 4, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Halide's Gift: A Novel (Hardcover)

This book was written by someone who cares deeply about women's rights and their lack in Ottoman Turkey at the turn of the century. The attitude is objective and the tone full of love for characters that are of such a different road of life from the author's. Having elements of both the Orient and the Occident in her upbringing and personality, Halide was one of the first Turkish girls to attend a school which has contributed tremendously to the enlightenment of Turkish women -- namely The American College for Girls, of which I am a graduate myself...

I'd like to correct a couple of minor details, though.. The mosque in Scutari is called Mihrimah, and I've never heard the name Mamounia [Edip's third wife]... Another point is that in those days it was not usual for women to go to mosques, even for funerals. Otherwise it's obvious that a thorough research went into the preparations for this book.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not quite what I expected but still a good read, April 2, 2002

By 

A. Marcoff "amarcof" (Florida, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Halide's Gift: A Novel (Hardcover)

I agree with those who say that this book didn't really match its description. I thought it was going to be more in the vein of "magical realism" (like Gabriel Garcia Marquez or Isabel Allende) in terms of explaining Halide's "gift". Instead this was only a very small and minor part of the development of the story. I also thought that the story would be told using Halide's voice or at least her point of view (from a woman's perspective). A lot more time was devoted to the male characters than I would have expected and this seemed to take away the focus from the important female characters who I would have liked to learn more about. It was an enjoyable book to read simply because it took place in a time and place that I know little about, but it definitely didn't live up to my expectations.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Life in Istanbul during the last years of the Ottoman Empire, July 30, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Halide's Gift: A Novel (Hardcover)

This book that was written by an American (Mrs. Frances Kazan) gives a very accurate picture of the daily life in Istanbul during the last years of the Ottoman Empire. While I was studying history at the Turkish public schools where I was born and raised, I often wondered how the daily life of the people in Turkey was during those difficult years. This book gives an account of the daily life from a Turkish woman's point of view - A Turkish Woman who was trained in a western school.

I disagree with Mr. Dimostenes Yagcioglu's comments that the author's knowledge of the Turkish Culture and language being superficial. The Harem life, the coffee houses at Pera, dinner at Tokatliyan, and the lokums of Haci Bekir etc. were all described correctly.