Scenes of Life

by Fatma Aliye, Nefise Kahraman (Editor), Karolina Dejnicka (Editor)

260 pages, Paperback

Published April 2, 2025

Reviews

[Keith Bruton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Scenes of Life is an insightful piece of work framed as a series of letters among five female friends in the late Ottoman Empire. We can see that Fatma was ahead of her time when she wrote this work, and it feels very modern and could have been written today with the issues it discusses, from marriage and love to women's roles and socioeconomic conditions. Hopefully more people can read this hidden gem from Turkey.

[Esra · Rating 5 out of 5]

Life of Scenes was a very enjoyable book—I wished it would never end. Through deep personal letters exchanged between well-educated Ottoman women, the book explores their relationships with their husbands and their introspections about life. The book was originally written in Ottoman Turkish. The translator first changed the text into Latin-script Ottoman, then into modern Turkish, and finally into English. What an effort! So the book includes parts in 4 languages, which is really interesting.

I read both the Turkish and English versions. The author, Fatma Aliye, was one of the first female writers in Turkey and made me feel very proud. As a Turkish reader, seeing her work translated into English was emotional and meaningful for me.

I truly recommend this special and deep conversational book to everyone. It is a great catch.

[okadinbukadin · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book I want to write about is Levâyih-i Hayat, an epistolary novel by Fatma Aliye, one of the few women writers of her time. The letters felt as though they had been written by a friend of mine; in fact, it was as if Mehabe, Fehame, Sabahat, Nebahat, and Itimad were sitting across from me, chatting. Through the correspondence between these women, you read about the condition of womanhood and the struggles of women in the late Ottoman period, in their own words and from their own pens.

How exciting it is that this edition contains the original Ottoman Turkish text, its transliteration into the Latin alphabet, its modern Turkish version and English translation. For you are not merely reading an epistolary novel; you are also experiencing the evolution of a language over the years. This lets you imagine the challenges a translator might encounter while translating a text that is more than a century old, while also giving you the opportunity to compare the versions as you read.

What excited me was also that the book was collectively translated into English led by the publishing house Translation Attached. The publisher's work stands far apart from large-scale commercial publishing: selective, meticulous, and the product of intense labor. It is, in a sense, an example of “slow publishing.”

Before I finish, I wish that all women might have hemşire-i azizes with whom they can exchange letters as sincerely as the women in this book do.

I have one lament though. I only wish I could have written this review in Ottoman Turkish too. Alas!

♡ ♡ ♡

Bahsedeceğim, zamanının sayılı kadın yazarlarından Fatma Aliye’nin mektup romanı Levâyih-i Hayat. Mektuplar bir arkadaşım tarafından yazılmış gibi hissettirdi; hatta Mehabe, Fehame, Sabahat, Nebahat ve İtimad karşımda oturmuş da sohbet ediyormuşuz gibi. Geç Osmanlı döneminde kadınlık halleri ve kadınların mücadelesini, bu kadınlar arasındaki mektuplaşma aracılığıyla, bizzat onların kalemlerinden okuyorsunuz.

Aynı baskının kitabın Osmanlıca aslını, Osmanlıca aslının latin harflerine aktarılmış halini, modern Türkçesini ve İngilizce çevirisini barındırması ne heyecan verici. Zira yalnızca bir mektup roman okumuyorsunuz, bir dilin yıllar içindeki dönüşümünü de deneyimliyorsunuz. Ve bu size en az yüzyıllık bir metnin çevirisi esnasında tercümanın karşılaşabileceği güçlükleri hayal ettiriyor ve okurken metinleri karşılaştırma imkanı veriyor.

Yine beni heyecanlandıran kitabın Translation Attached yayınevi öncülüğünde kolektif olarak çevrilmiş olması. Yayınevinin işleri büyük ölçekli yayıncılığın çok dışında; seçici, incelikli, yoğun emek ürünü. Bir nevi “yavaş yayıncılık” örneği.

Bitirmeden dileğim, tüm kadınların bu kitaptaki gibi içtenlikle mektuplaşabildikleri hemşire-i azizeleri olsun.

Ancak bir hayıflanmam da var. Keşke bu paylaşımı Osmanlı Türkçesiyle de yazabilseydim. Heyhat!