Purple Hibiscus - Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie

Last year I read Ms. Adichie's novel "Half of a Yellow Sun", a novel about the civil war in Nigeria. It was a great novel - well written and informative and one which I highly recommend. I hadn't known anything about the war in Nigeria (nor did I even know that there had been a war in Nigeria) prior to reading that novel. I enjoyed that book so much that I was eager to read more by the same author. Purple Hibiscus was Ms. Adichie's first novel. Set in Nigeria and interspersed with local dialect and imagery about life in Nigeria, Purple Hibiscus is about a 15 year old girl, Kambili, who grew up under an authoritarian and extremely religious father who kept a strict household, a household with no smiles, no freedom and lots of beatings. When the political climate in Nigeria turns sour, Kambili and her brother are sent to stay with their aunt and her family. There they learn to sing, to smile, to have fun, relax, and more importantly to assert themselves. She begins to see her father not as a man who inflicted pain for her benefit, but as a kind of tyrant, but she continues to love him. This book examines the problems created by religion and overzealous faith, domestic violence, and personal development. It was a quick read but an enjoyable one.

Bliss by O.Z. Livaneli

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.