Maureen Freely, journalist, novelist and a celebrated translator of the Nobel Prize-winning author, Orhan Pamuk, is in the U.S. this week for the publication of her riveting new novel, Enlightenment. Born in the U.S., Freely grew up in Istanbul and now lives in England.
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Blog: The Winged Elephant (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
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Last week, after Terryl Given’s piece about Mormonism and politics, I started to wonder about one of my favorite Mormons, Orson Scott Card. I’m not a huge Science Fiction fan, but the Ender’s Game series captivated me as a young teen and I still list the series among my favorite books. Below, in an excerpt from Given’s book People of Paradox: A History of Mormon Culture is a look at Card in light of his religion.
Orson Scott Card has been called the Mormon “who to this point best — and most radically fulfills the great prophetic hopes for a world-class as well as genuinely Mormon literature.” One of the most prolific and arguably the best science fiction writer alive, Card is best known for his Enders saga, the first volume of which won an unprecedented doubleheader, scoring both the Nebula and the Hugo awards, as did its sequel, in a feat still unequaled (Ender’s Game, 1986; Speaker for the Dead, 1987). Some of his corpus is recognizably Mormon in fairly conspicuous ways. Saints and Folk of the Fringe, for instance, represent direct engagement, the former historical and the latter futuristic, with Mormonism itself. His Tales of Alvin Maker series (six volumes and counting) is a thinly veiled version of Joseph Smith’s life, cast as fantasy that reconceptualizes American history. Earlier, he published a five volume science fiction series clearly based on the Book of Mormon (Homecoming, 1992–1996).
I'm very interested in Maureen Freely. I'm part of the Vulpes Libris (Book Fox) literary site, and one of our members, Ariadne, reviewed Enlightenment. The link is here if you're interested: http://vulpeslibris.wordpress.com/2008/01/10/enlightenment-by-maureen-freely/
Ariadne was tutored by Ms Freely on her MA in Writing, and she mentions this personal connection at the start of the review.
As a writer of Armenian descent, I'm particularly interested in books relating to Turkey. My novel, Prince Rupert's Teardrop, was recently published by independent literary fiction publisher, Two Ravens Press, and it is partly about the cultural aftermath of the Armenian genocide of 1915.
Enlightenment looks like a fascinating book, and I very much look forward to reading it.
Best wishes, Lisa.