About Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar

A Mind At Peace

A Mind At Peace is the first of the novels to discuss the problem of Westernization using class consciousness and the principles of modernist novel in the most comprehensive and the deepest way in the history of Turkish literature. Classical fiction is fragmented; jumps in time are formed; the character is given in a multi-parted unity and with intensive psychological analysis.Tanpınar’s main character Mumtaz is one of the characters that reflect it best as a modern novel character. The conflicts of west-east, traditional-new, which Tanpınar discussed in all of his works, fight their biggest battles in Mumtaz’s mind, individual happiness and social responsibility. Mumtaz, who is neither an Easterner nor a Westerner, is a representative of a generation in-between and having grown with the trauma of the war; he cannot find any answers to his existential questions neither in religion nor in love nor in western culture. Even though there are different comments on whether Mumtaz dies or not at the end of the novel, leaving the end open the author gives the readers the chance to choose whatever end they want.

Rights • Albania: Fan Noli; Bosnian: Tugra; Brazil: Leya; Bulgaria: Trud; China: CIRP, 2008; Germany: Unionsverlag 2008; Iran: Kelag-E Sefid; Japan: Fujiwara; Lebanon: ASP; The Netherlands: Athenaeum; Norway: Gyldendal; US: Archipelago Books, 2008;