Enlightenment - Hardcover

Maureen Freely was born in the United States and grew up in Istanbul. She graduated from Harvard University and is now a journalist and a professor at the University of Warwick as well as an acclaimed translator.

"A dark Conradian drama set in a beautifully illuminated Istanbul, where the past is always with us" -- Orhan Pamuk, Nobel Prizewinning author of Snow

"A gripping novel" -- The Independent

"A psychological thriller, a murder story, a rumination on friendship and a political investigation... This is a story almost impossible to summarize but hard to forget. It's remarkable for its descriptions of the city [Istanbul] as it was in the 1970s and as it is now, after the break-up of the Soviet Union has released so much energy around the area. Freely is an almost perversely original writer, sharply observing the world she knows so well and upending all one's suppositions and assumptions...A brave, unflinching work of art." -- Washington Post Book World

"Byzantine in structure, mischievous in intent, it is as concerned with the garbled and provisional nature of truth as with the minutiae of repression" -- Times Literary Supplement

"That rare pleasure, a book that grips on every level, a bold and beautiful novel about history, memory and love." -- Nicci French, author of Catch Me When I Fall

At the start of Freely's complex, often riveting novel set in contemporary and Cold War Turkey, a journalist known only as "Miss M" returns to Istanbul in 2005 after a long absence at the request of Jeannie Wakefield, whose father, William, was an American spy. Jeannie hopes that Miss M will write an article to help her husband, once Miss M's lover, who's been detained in the United States and sent to Guantánamo. A few months later, Jeannie disappears, leaving behind a long letter detailing events from the 1960s. The main narrative threads--extracts from Jeannie's letter; Miss M's memories of Istanbul from that same period and her present-day account of investigating Jeannie's long-ago indoctrination into a Communist cell, which was at one point charged with the infamous but possibly apocryphal Trunk Murder--interweave toward a quietly stunning conclusion. Both mystery/thriller and mainstream literary readers will be well rewarded. Freely is the English translator of Nobel Prize-winner Orhan Pamuk's novel, Snow. -- Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

Freely (The Other Rebecca), who has translated Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk's recent works (e.g., Snow), possesses an exceptional command of language: her sentences are so apt, they jump out at you... In this ingenious novel about appearance and reality, it is difficult to predict what will happen next or what it means, but once you start this book, you will not put it down. Strongly recommended for general collections. -- Library Journal (Starred Review)

Freely seeks to unravel both a mystery mired in the past and an archaic societal system that seems out of sync in the present... [A] riveting narrative of cold war and post 9/11 Turkey with a chillingly unexpected revelation. -- Booklist