Human Landscapes from My Country: An Epic Novel in Verse

by Nazim Hikmet, Randy Blasing (Translator), Mutlu Konuk Blasing (Translator), Edward Hirsch (Foreword by)

Overview

The complete English translation of Nazim Hikmet's epic masterwork.

Written during the Second World War while Hikmet was serving a thirteen-year sentence as a political prisoner, his verse-novel uses cinematic techniques to tell the story of the emergence of secular, modern Turkey by focusing on the always-entertaining stories of sundry characters from all walks of life. As his vignettes flash before our eyes at movie-like speed, it becomes clear he is also telling the turbulent story of the twentieth century itself and the ongoing struggle between tradition, which trusts in God, and modernity, which entrusts the world to human hands.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780892553495
Publisher:	Persea
Publication date:	01/06/2009
Series:	Karen and Michael Braziller Books
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	480
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Nazim Hikmet is considered Turkey's greatest modern poet. For his Communist views, he was imprisoned in Turkey and his work was banned. His poetry has been translated into more than fifty languages. He won the World Peace Prize (the USSR's equivalent of the Nobel) in 1950. He died in 1963 in exile.

Randy Blasing, a former National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellow, is the author of seven books of poetry, including Choice Words: Poems 1970-2005. He is also the eminent translator, alongside Mutlu Konuk, of the renowned Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet. He lives in Lincoln, Rhode Island.

Mutlu Konuk Blasing, a native of Istanbul, is Professor of English at Brown University. Her books include Lyric Poetry: The Pain and the Pleasure of Words. She is the co-translator (with Randy Blasing) of the renowned English translations of Nazim Hikmet, and the author of four scholarly books on American poetry.

Edward Hirsch has published seven books of poems, including Special Orders. He lives in New York City.

Table of Contents

	Translators' Preface	vi
	Foreword	vii
	Introduction	ix
	Book One	3
	Book Two	93
	Book Three	231
	Book Four	337
	Book Five	407
	Glossary	464

Editorial Reviews

One of the great works of modern literature. —Raymond Carver

From the Publisher

Hikmet takes the traditional oral epic form and adapts it to the modern condition by using elements of drama, film and the novel. ... Mutlu Konuk Blasing [the translator], who recently wrote an excellent biography of Hikmet, does a miraculous job here. ... Human Landscapes spreads across 17,000 iron-forged lines, but it is extraordinarily efficient, never wasting a single word. The whole thing effectively amounts to a compendium of Anatolia's collective memories, traumas, hopes and fears at the time of the Second World War.
”

William Armstrong - World Literature Today