THE ENDLESS COUNTRY – SAMI KENT

Captivating. Kent effortlessly weaves travels that are close to his heart into a bigger story of Turkey’s past and present – Mishal Husain A rich, spellbinding book: dense with people, stories, history, colour, lived experience . . . The book is alive on every page – Neel Mukherjee, Booker Prize-shortlisted author of The Lives of Others The Endless Country takes a journey through Turkey’s past – the nation the author’s father left decades ago and he returns to as a young man. It is not about Erdogan or Ataturk, the two towering Presidents who have book-ended that history, and at times have appeared impossible to escape. Instead Sami Kent’s book goes deep beyond them, revealing a history as rich, layered and absurd as his family’s favourite dessert, kunefe: a shredded wheat pastry with a core of melted cheese, a topping of pistachios, and a drowning of syrup. From tiny weightlifters to the world’s biggest prison, from a failed socialist commune to a wildly successful orchid ice cream, the book is a tribute to the sheer bewildering diversity of Turkey’s past: its people, their ideas and their struggles. This is surely how history should be told – human, fun, alive – The Telegraph