Maureen Freely is a renowned novelist, translator and activist. She was born in the US but grew up in Turkey. Educated at Radcliffe College, Harvard University, she has spent most of her adult life in England.
She is perhaps best known for her translations of five books by the Turkish novelist and Nobel Laureate, Orhan Pamuk.
She is a professor at the University of Warwick, and currently the chair of the Translators Association. She continues to be active in PEN and other crusading organizations.
Sailing Through Byzantium is a magical, multi-layered novel about history and memory, and how we interpret reality.
Set in Istanbul in 1962, it is the story of nine year-old Mimi, whose parents and bohemian friends are marking the eve of the Cuban Missile Crisis with an end-of-the-world party while Russian ships sail along the dark waters of the Bosphorous. Mimi watches and listens, searching for the truth. Her quest leads her to the shocking discovery that her mother, whose singing voice is pure and lovely, has woven a byzantine web of lies.
Nicci Gerrard says of Sailing Through Byzantium: ‘History pours through this wonderful novel, but refracted through a young girl’s enchantment and dread. This is the story of a country, a city, a family, a scared child, in which memory throws the past into a kaleidoscopic pattern, vivid and always changing. In other words: quite fabulous!’
For further information please contact Lynn Michell at Linen Press.