An often forgotten episode in the remarkable life of Halide Edib was her exile in England in 1908/9 after insisting on writing her first article in Tanın, a journal published by the poet Tevfik Fikret, under her own name, Halide, rather than her husband’s.
In England Halide became a close friend of Isabel Fry, sister of the Bloomsbury painter and art theorist Roger Fry. Dr.Nagihan Haliloğlu, who has written and lectured widely on literary topics from Jean Ryhs to Nabakov, is currently working on contemporary narratives of melancholy. In this fascinating Anglo-Turkish Society lecture, she examines Edib’s view of the English, initially as hosts, later as occupiers. (She narrowly escaped arrest during the latter, as she set out to join Atatürk in Ankara).
Dr Nagihan Haliloğlu is a graduate of Bosphorus University where she studied chemistry. She completed masters degrees in English at Middlebury College, Vermont, and in Oriental Studies at Oxford. She completed her doctoral studies at the University of Heidelberg.
Issue 67, December 2024
Beauty in the Wilderness
