Tanpinar's Five Cities

Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar's Five Cities was first published in Turkish as Be ehir in 1946 and revised in 1960. It consists of five essays, each focused on a city significant in Anatolian history and in Tanpinar's emotional life. Part history, part autobiography, part poetic meditation on time and memory, Five Cities is Proustian in style, with a tension between a backward-looking melancholy and a concern for the unpredictable future of the authors country. Comparable to Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuks Istanbul: Memories of a City, Five Cities emphasizes personal attitudes and reactions but has a wider scope of geography, history and culture.