Seven Houses

Author Biography

Alev Lytle Croutier is the most widely published woman novelist of Turkish origin. Her work has been translated into twenty-one languages.
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Synopsis:

After a long period of absence, an expatriate returns to Turkey and revisits the seven houses that her family had occupied for four generations and the people who inhabit them, in memory and in actuality.

Her journey is a sweep through the Twentieth century, taking us from the last days of the Ottoman monarchy to the country’s transformation into a republic as it struggles to bridge the gap between the East and the West, Asia and Europe, religion (fundamentalism) and secularism.

It is the saga of a silk-making family, as told with the voice of the seven houses, ranging from a silk plantation to an old yali, to a shabby high-rise apartment building. Profoundly heart-breaking and filled with hilarious joy at times (as when the family have to throw out their beloved sister because of adultery or when they learn to tango or fashion themselves after old Hollywood movie stars).

The narrators are the houses themselves, since they witness everything that goes on within their walls can hear and observe with a morality of their own. In this case, the walls have ears. In each page, we sense the duality beneath the skin of beauty, whether it is mosquito larvae swimming under the gardenia petals, or silkworm eggs hidden inside an ivory walking stick.

It’s a book of fragility and endurance, written with the sensuously detached language of a prodigal daughter returning to her place of birth. The author manipulates English, her language of exile, giving it a new cadence, capturing the rhythm of her native tongue with its mythical nuances. We are entranced and become part of the story as if running through a corridor of silk.

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