Modern Times of Deception 2: Purple

2003 (Novel) 2004 Orhan Kemal Novel Prize (published in Greece in 2008)

Tourism company director İlhan Sacit falls for his employee Renginur, a young woman his daughter’s age and has a child with her. His betrayal devastates his wife and infuriates his mercenary sister-in-law into vowing vengeance.

The family gather round at İlhan’s hotel for the young child’s birthday party. The night begins well, but ends with an unexpected murder. Purple is set within a twenty-four-hour period and relates a family’s forty years in flashbacks, against a background of Turkey moving from an agricultural to industrial economic model, and from the free market to property speculation, changing and scattering people along the way. The novel illustrates the social panorama of the country between the 1960s and the 2000s as its flowing style examines the fundamental issues of the human condition: marriage, masculinity and femininity.