An Istanbul Odyssey

PREPARING ONESELF for the imminent death of one parent but being struck by the sudden death of the other turns a life upside down. So it happens with Eylül, a greenhorn lawyer in Germany whose mother Yağmur drowns in the swimming pool of the family’s villa in Istanbul with a very high blood alcohol level. The death is mysterious enough, but ruled an accident with no sign of foul play. Eylül, naturally, has more than her share of doubts. Not least because her mother was a celebrity lawyer, running the law firm established years ago by her own father. Eylül returns to Türkiye and takes over the firm even as she mourns her mother. And yet, this structural upending of the young woman’s life is only the beginning.

Izmirli: My Last Love was published in Turkish a decade ago and translated by Feyza Howell in 2022. It is Firat Sunel’s second novel but has finally become available in India after the success of the third and last, The Lighthouse Family (2020, translated 2024). Sunel is the Turkish ambassador to India, Nepal and Bhutan and while diplomat-writers, including poets and historians, are not rare at all, one doesn’t come across a diplomat-novelist every day.

It is said that the women of Izmir (Smyrna till the 1930s) are so beautiful that it’s easy to tell where they are from. Yağmur was one such Izmir beauty and her daughter isn’t far behind. Maybe the fact that both Sunel and Howell were born in or around Izmir imbues the narrative with the magic and mystery of the place. In a case file, Eylül comes across a letter in her mother’s handwriting addressed to one Izmirli (the demonym for a native of Izmir) and realises Yağmur not only had a lover but never got over the pain of parting. Visiting her father at a care home where he has been in a vegetative state since a stroke and navigating the machinations of colleagues and clients constantly testing her mettle while making one new friend who turns out to be faster than her social coaching, Eylül is lonely, separated from her German boyfriend who cannot bother to join her at her mother’s funeral.

In an interview with Open last year, Sunel had said, “The trauma of forced migration is in our genes” (March 18, 2024). The context was The Lighthouse Family and the Treaty of Lausanne (1923) which saw the largest exchange and expulsion of population (Greek and Turkish) in history. Migration is a diluted form of displacement in this earlier work—ironically Eylül’s voluntary departure for Germany is less traumatic than the forced return home.

But like a wrong note or a shadow in the night, Eylül cannot take her mind off Izmirli till the obsession unravels her sanity. Who is Izmirli when he doesn’t have a name? Does/did he exist? Did he cause Yağmur’s death? Matters are not made easier by her mother dispersing many unsent letters to her lover across archived case files. Sunel can tell a story and make it sound as if it could happen to any of us. But it doesn’t, and therein hides the magnetic pull of this psychological thriller. One doesn’t know one’s family. One didn’t know one’s mother. One certainly doesn’t know oneself. And a quest begun rarely meets the end sought even as it tears the veil between memory and fact, reality and nightmare.

booksfictionFirat SunelIzmirli: My Last Lovenovelpsychological thrillerTurkish Ambassador