An eye-opening book, Bliss captured my attention from the first page and I was unable to put it down. This is a story of three unhappy lives brought together by circumstance. Meryem is a young, Muslim girl living in a fundamentalist family in the East of Turkey. When her uncle rapes her, Meryem's family shames her and hides her away in a shed while they decide her fate. Meanwhile, a university professor - Irfan - is dissatisfied with his life of luxury which he feels has no meaning. Faced with the choice between suicide and escape, he chooses to leave everything behind and set sail on the Aegean sea. While Meryem sits in the shed and Irfan sails the sea, Cemal, Meryem's cousin, is finishing his military service in the remote mountains of Eastern Turkey where death by PKK rifle hangs over his head each day. When Cemal returns from the military, Meryem's family informs him of Meryem's "sin" and gives him the mission of killing the girl in order to erase her sin. Cemal's father (the uncle who raped Meryem) decides that the best way to get rid of Meryem is to take her to Istanbul, a huge city where no one will notice two new people and where it will be easy to dispose of the girl and then return to his hometown. So Cemal and Meryem set off on a journey that will change their lives...
I enjoyed this book because it showcases the contradictions and confusions inherrent in Turkey: Religious fundamentalism vs. mainstream practicing muslims vs. secularism, to wear a headscarf or not, Western vs. Eastern culture and family demands vs. own conscience.
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