Dying is Easier than Loving (Ottoman Quartet)
This massive novel richly repays the effort of overcoming its daunting title, 556 pages, and initially unfamiliar Ottoman setting. Imagine plunging into War and Peace midway: this novel, too, abounds in characters with challenging names, grim battlefields, obsessive love affairs, and long philosophical passages. But once you find your feet, you luxuriate in the poignant, intricately interwoven stories and the acute psychological analysis.
Published in Turkish in 2015 and ably translated by Brendan Freely, it is the third of a projected four volumes depicting the decline and fall of the Ottoman Empire. But after the attempted coup of 2016, historical fiction became a crime in Turkey. The Erdogan government accused the author, Ahmet Altan, of sending seditious “subliminal messages,” and sentenced him to life in prison, where he stayed until released in 2021 after an international outcry.
“My life imitates my novel,” Altan has said. Not exactly this novel—except for the political intrigue. Those unfamiliar with early 20th-century history may be surprised to learn that in 1913 the Ottomans lost a war with Bulgaria. Subsequent unrest in the Balkans helped precipitate World War I.
The Ottoman Quartet rotates around a modern-day recluse, Osman, who is visited in his crumbling Istanbul mansion by “his dead”—the characters of the novels—still vociferously telling their stories even though they are insubstantial, like cobwebs. The action shifts between the horrors of war and the fashionable corruption of a casino, where a mysterious Russian pianist, Anya, mechanically plays. Other characters include pashas, dervishes, an ex-Sultan, a high-handed aristocratic grandmother, and a French journalist hopelessly in love with an independent Ottoman woman. Altogether, it is a fabulous literary experience, much better than prison—or becoming a cobweb.
