Alev Lytle Croutier

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Readings with:
Robert Haas, Brenda Hillman, Michael Ondaatje, Michelle Richmond, Alev Croutier, and Al Young
This is a fundraiser for MFA in Fiction/St.Mary's College.
Tickets are $100.
WINE and Hors d'ouvres

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PUBLISHED: Sep.01.2002

Seven Houses

After a long period of absence, an expatriate returns to Turkey and revisits the seven houses that her family had occupied for four generations and the people who inhabit them, in memory and in actuality. Her journey is a sweep through the Twentieth century, taking us from the last days of the Ottoman monarchy to the country’s transformation into a republic as it struggles to...

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PUBLISHED: Nov.01.2000

The Palace of Tears

“This is an enchanting tale of love: a man dreams of a woman, while she dreams of the man who is dreaming of her. It reminds me of Silk by Alessandro Baricco, and One Thousand and One Nights, but Alev Croutier has a voice of her own, soft and poetic, like music in a Turkish garden.” Isabel Allende...

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PUBLISHED: Jun.01.1989

Harem: The World Behind the Veil

Drawing on a host of intimate firsthand accounts, histories, and memoirs in English, French, Italian, and Turkish, Harem explores life in the world’s harems, from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century, focusing on the fabled harem of the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul as a paradigm for all. We are admitted to the boudoirs and baths of the sultanas. We also enter the slave markets...

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PUBLISHED: Aug.05.2009

Leyla: The Black Tulip

In her adult title Harem: The World behind the Veil (1989), Croutier explored the Grand Harem in Istanbul's Tokapi Palace, and she returns to this evocative setting in her first novel for young people. The year is 1720. Twelve-year-old Leyla has always been privy to a happy lifestyle in Istanbul. The daughter of a magnificent painter, Leyla's existence has been one full of art,...

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PUBLISHED: Oct.10.2002

Taking the Waters

This delightful book dives into the mythological and metaphysical history of water – such as water deities, mermaids, ritual baths, and sacred springs. Croutier surveys bottled waters, warns of pollution, and global over-consumption. She devotes short, entertaining sections to water rituals, rainmaking, dowsing, fountains, and water palaces. Paintings by Botticelli, Klimt, Turner,...

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About Alev

Alev Lytle Croutier is the most widely published woman novelist of Turkish origin. Her work has been translated into twenty-one languages. Alev was born in Izmir, Turkey. She came to the US when she was eighteen to attend College (Oberlin), became a...

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