Defne Suman – författare

'Vivid, evocative and tender.' Elif Shafak‘In our family, secrets were buried deep like treasure, never to be spoken of...’1974. Melike should be happy: school is shut and her parents have stopped hosting parties for their rowdy political friends. But she’s scared. She can tell from her parents’ urgent whispers about prison, invasion and military coups that Istanbul is changing. So when the family relocate to a quaint village in the south, Melike is hopeful life might get better. And for a while, it does. But then her beloved father disappears...2003. Nearly three decades have passed, and Melike has done her best to move on. But despite her successful career as an art historian and a husband who adores her, she has always felt a lingering discontent. When she meets mysterious – and extremely handsome – stranger Petro, Melike feels her fortunes changing. But Petro isn’t who he says he is. And when Melike uncovers his true identity, she also lays bare a lifetime of hidden pasts...With a backdrop of the Turkish army’s occupation of Cyprus in 1974, Summer Heat explores family secrets, tangled identities and one woman’s place in her country’s devastating history.

'Vivid, evocative and tender.' Elif Shafak‘In our family, secrets were buried deep like treasure, never to be spoken of...’1974. Melike should be happy: school is shut and her parents have stopped hosting parties for their rowdy political friends. But she’s scared. She can tell from her parents’ urgent whispers about prison, invasion and military coups that Istanbul is changing. So when the family relocate to a quaint village in the south, Melike is hopeful life might get better. And for a while, it does. But then her beloved father disappears...2003. Nearly three decades have passed, and Melike has done her best to move on. But despite her successful career as an art historian and a husband who adores her, she has always felt a lingering discontent. When she meets mysterious – and extremely handsome – stranger Petro, Melike feels her fortunes changing. But Petro isn’t who he says he is. And when Melike uncovers his true identity, she also lays bare a lifetime of hidden pasts...With a backdrop of the Turkish army’s occupation of Cyprus in 1974, Summer Heat explores family secrets, tangled identities and one woman’s place in her country’s devastating history.

I was writing to her, so that she would know me not as this old person whose joints creaked when he rose from a chair, but as the real Pericles: the man who dreamt, deceived, envied, loved…Pericles Drakos has lived in the exquisite Circle Building for all of his seventy-five years. From its lofty windows, he has seen his little corner of Istanbul shift and transform. But as the area has become increasingly gentrified, Pericles has retreated into its shadowy corners. And when the pandemic hits, his isolation deepens.But when Leyla, a sparky and beautiful thirty-something moves in, Pericles is enthralled. And when he discovers Leyla is a writer, he decides to put his own pen to paper and record his own fraught history: that of a Greek man subjected to the politics of oppression and intimidation in twentieth-century Turkey.

I was writing to her, so that she would know me not as this old person whose joints creaked when he rose from a chair, but as the real Pericles: the man who dreamt, deceived, envied, loved…Pericles Drakos has lived in the exquisite Circle Building for all of his seventy-five years. From its lofty windows, he has seen his little corner of Istanbul shift and transform. But as the area has become increasingly gentrified, Pericles has retreated into its shadowy corners. And when the pandemic hits, his isolation deepens.But when Leyla, a sparky and beautiful thirty-something moves in, Pericles is enthralled. And when he discovers Leyla is a writer, he decides to put his own pen to paper and record his own fraught history: that of a Greek man subjected to the politics of oppression and intimidation in twentieth-century Turkey.

September 1905. At the heart of the Ottoman Empire, in the ancient city of Smyrna, Scheherazade is born to an opium-dazed mother.At the very same moment, an Indian spy sails into the golden-hued, sycamore-scented city with a secret mission from the British Empire. When he leaves, 17 years later, it will be to the smell of kerosene and smoke as the city, and its people, are engulfed in flames.Told through the intertwining fates of a Levantine, a Greek, a Turkish and an Armenian family, this unforgettable novel reveals a city, and a culture, now lost to time.'Fiercely intelligent, finely textured and achingly beautiful' Elif Shafak 'Utterly delightful' Buki Papillon 'This rich tale of love and loss gives voice to the silenced, and adds music to their histories' Maureen Freely, Chair, English PEN'A must-read' Ayse Arman, Hu¨rriyet 'A symphony of literature' Açik Radyo 'Defne Suman is a story-teller. She tells the story of how love, emotions and identities are influenced by socio-political events of a lifetime' Cumhuriyet Newspaper 'A wonderfully braided story of family secrets set in the magical city of Smyrna, told in luminous prose' Lou Ureneck, author of Smyrna, September 1922

Told from four different perspectives, At the Breakfast Table is a story of hidden histories and family secrets, from the author of The Silence of Scheherazade.Buyukada, Turkey, 2017. In the glow of a late summer morning, family gather for the 100th birthday of the famous artist Shirin Saka. It ought to be a time of fond reminiscence, looking back on a long and fruitful artistic career, on memories spanning almost a century.But the deep past is something Shirin has spent a lifetime trying to conceal. Her grandchildren, Nur and Fikret, and great-grandchild, Celine, do not know what she's hiding, though they are intimately aware of the secret's psychological consequences. The siblings invite family friend and investigative journalist Burak along to interview Shirin – in celebration of her centenary, and also in the hope of persuading her to open up.Eventually Shirin begins to express her pain the only way she knows how. She paints a story onto her dining room wall, revealing a history wiped from public consciousness and generations of her family's history.'Fiercely intelligent, finely textured and achingly beautiful.' Elif Shafak