Felâtun Bey and Rakım Efendi (in Modern Turkish)

Felâtun and Râkım are two friends in their twenties who grew up in close neighborhoods, one with a westernized father, and the other with the sacrifices of his mother and nanny in difficult conditions after his father died. Felâtun Bey is a westernized type who seeks to dress stylishly and travel; Râkım Efendi is a hard-working, self-educated person who has assimilated Eastern and Western cultures. Ahmed Midhat Efendi creates an ideal type by comparing these two completely opposite types in various events, sometimes with a rather humorous language. The novel, which also bears parallels with the author's life story, reveals the problems of a society on the verge of Westernization through the westernized snob type who cannot digest this new culture.

Ahmed Midhat Efendi (1844-1912) is one of the leading writers of the Tanzimat period. He started his writing career as a journalist and added story and novel writing to his writing career, writing about a hundred and fifty works in various fields. Since he saw writing as a tool to educate the public, he was always in dialogue with the reader in his works full of encyclopedic information. He entered journalism in Sofia, first as a writer and then as the editor-in-chief of the Tuna newspaper. He went to Baghdad with Midhat Pasha and entered a very wide cultural circle including painters Osman Hamdi Bey, Muhammed Zühavi and Şirazlı Bakır Can Muattar, deepening his knowledge of Western and Eastern cultures. He established his own printing house in his house in Tahtakale and began publishing his books. In the meantime, he continued his journalism with newspapers and magazines such as Devir, Bedir, Dağarcık, Kırkambar. Because of his writings, the Abdülaziz administration exiled him along with Namık Kemal. During his three-year exile in Rhodes, he opened a school for children, started teaching and wrote his first novels. On his return to Istanbul, he held various civil service positions and founded Tercüman-ı Hakikat, one of the longest-running newspapers in the history of the Turkish press. We will continue to include selected works by Ahmed Midhat, who wrote on almost every subject, even using new techniques, in our Turkish Literature Classics Series.

(From the Promotional Bulletin)

Editor : Hacer Er

Dough Type : 2. Dough

Print Count : 1. Edition

First Printing Year : 2018

Number of Pages : 180

Dimensions : 12.5 x 20.5