They Burn the Thistles

The great Turkish writer Yashar Kemal's tales of conflict and adventure set in the Taurus Mountains of southeastern Turkey fuse ancient local traditions of oral storytelling with the social and psychological awareness of the nineteenth-century novel. Kemal's books are at once intimately involving and larger than life, heroic and humble. In the recurrent character of Memed, a peasant youth whose life of brigandage has both set him apart from his community and made him a symbol of freedom for it, Kemal has created one of the few truly mythic figures of modern fiction, reflecting a complex understanding of the human condition. What makes Memed so appealing is his fallibility. His acts of heroism are as fumbling as they are dramatic, and he is drawn to inaction as well as action. We believe in him because we know that he shares our vulnerability. The other quality of Kemal's work is his love of the natural world. He is not only a great novelist, he is a great nature writer. Scents and sounds, vistas of mountains and streams and fields, rise up from the pages of his books with primitive force. In "They Burn the Thistles," Memed is on the run. Hunted by his enemies, wounded, at wit's end, he has lost faith in himself and has retreated to ponder the vanity of human action. Only a chance encounter with an extraordinarily beautiful and powerful stallion, itself a hunted creature, serves to restore his confidence and determination. Once again Memed sets out to fulfill his mysterious and perilous destiny.