As Turkey passes its centenary, here are five of the best books to understand the country's first 100 years. Reflecting on his childhood, Orga remembers eating melon, on ice, on a silver plate when he first heard the drums of war - those that announced, all over Istanbul, that the first world war had begun.
Set in early republican Istanbul, Tanpinar's novel was a groundbreaking satire of the politics of early Turkey - namely, the project to modernise the nation, with reforms at once liberating and overbearing. The book follows the eponymous fictional institute as it attempts to make sure all its citizens and their watches are kept to correct time.
Turkey's best loved and coolest poet, Hikmet was a communist imprisoned in Turkey and exiled to Moscow, whose work was officially banned in the country of his birth for years. His poetry is known for its human scale, for the stories of everyday people told in everyday Turkish (and translated brilliantly here).
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