Chernow on Mark Twain

Wednesday, July 16, 2025

I enjoyed listening to Ron Chernow discuss his new biography of Mark Twain on the Ryen Russillo podcast. I haven't read the book, but I've been eyeing it over the past couple of months. I'd read a pretty scathing review of Mark Twain in The New York Times, which had put me off a bit, but I understand as well as anybody that a scathing review usually tells us more about the reviewer than the book. 

It was interesting to learn about Twain's entrepreneurial side. It reminded me a bit of Rebecca Loncrain's biography of L. Frank Baum in some ways. 

Red Star over the Black Sea: Paperback edition out

Sunday, June 29, 2025

The paperback version of Red Star over the Black Sea: Nâzım Hikmet and his Generation has come out. 

Yay!

I love this cover

The hardcover came out in July of 2023, and a Turkish edition is supposed to be in print within the next year or so. 

Below you can find links to reviews, podcasts, and online lectures related to the book. 

Haven't read the book yet? What's wrong with you!? Pick up the paperback here for a measly $35. While you're at it, order a copy for your local library, too. 

Upcoming Online Talk for the Boğaziçi Üniversitesi Nâzım Hikmet Merkezi

Thursday, January 11, 2024

In case you're interested, I'll be giving an online talk about Nâzım Hikmet and my book Red Star over the Black Sea: Nâzım Hikmet and his Generation at an event organized by the Nâzım Hikmet Center at Bosphorus University. 

The event takes place on January 15, which is the 122nd anniversary of what is typically considered Nâzım Hikmet's birthday (in fact, it seems he was born toward the end of 1901). Online admission is free and the talk begins at 8 am, Montana time (10 am Eastern US, and 6 pm in Turkey). 

For more information, see below. 

Gabor Szabo in Budapest

Monday, January 8, 2024

I was in Budapest recently, where I was constantly reminded of one of my favorite jazz musicians, Gabor Szabo.  

Nâzım Hikmet in Montreal

Friday, November 10, 2023

I recently got back from the annual Middle East Studies Association conference in Montreal. It was great. I went to university in Montreal and had only been back a couple of times since I graduated more than thirty years ago. This was my first visit since 2001. 

Best of all, I had the chance to talk for a little while about my new book on Nâzım Hikmet, Red Star over the Black Sea: Nâzım Hikmet and his Generation. The hardcover is now selling for just $41. And if that's too rich for you, a paperback edition is due to come out by March of 2025. 

Red Star over the Black Sea: Excerpts from Chapter 11

Saturday, June 17, 2023

On this date in 1951, a Turkish poet named Nâzım Hikmet awoke before dawn, crept out of his house in Istanbul, and boarded a motorboat piloted by his brother-in-law. Their destination? The Eastern bloc. 

Chris-Craft boat of the sort Nâzım Hikmet
used to escape Turkey in 1951

 

The two brothers-in-law rode their boat up the Bosphorous, the turquoise saltwater strait which divides Turkey, and Istanbul, into “European” and “Asian” sections, before heading out into the Black Sea. Their original idea had been to get Nâzım to Bulgaria, and from there the USSR. En route, however, the brothers-in-law spotted a Romanian cargo ship, the Plekhanov. Boarding this should would, for Nâzım, be just as good as traveling all the way into Bulgarian territorial waters. Either way, they figured, Nâzım would be safely deposited behind the Iron Curtain. Nâzım boarded the Plekhanov, and his brother-in-law turned around and piloted the boat back to Istanbul. They would never see each other again.

Below you'll find some excerpts from Chapter 11 of my new book, Red Star over the Black Sea: Nâzım Hikmet and his Generation. These pages relate what Nâzım was doing between the day of his escape from Turkey and his arrival in Moscow twelve days later. They're redacted and without footnotes, though. If you want the real deal, you'll have to buy the book.  

Excerpts from Chapter 4, Red Star over the Black Sea: Nâzım Hikmet and his Generation

Saturday, May 20, 2023

The first time I visited Batumi, Georgia, I couldn't believe my eyes. Rather than the drab, post-Soviet settlement that I expected to find, I'd come across a subtropical-looking place filled with flowers, weird-looking insects, and pastel-colored buildings. That was back in 2009, when I undertook the first of two research trips (the second was in 2013) on behalf of what would become my first book, Turks Across Empires.  

During the course of writing my second book, Red Star over the Black Sea, I didn't go back to Batumi. I did, however, feel transported there somewhat by the writing in Vâlâ Nureddin's later account of his travels through Anatolia and the USSR with Nâzım Hikmet. Vâlâ's description of their first days in Georgia, which had recently come under Bolshevik control, brought me back to the rocky beaches and very cool vibe that I associated with Batumi in particular. 

Below you'll find a few of the sections from Chapter 4 of Red Star, which went on sale in the UK a couple of months ago. The book is set to go on sale in the US at the beginning of June. The photos are from a travelogue that I was keeping on this blog in 2009. 

Red Star over the Black Sea: Excerpts from Chapter 5

Saturday, April 8, 2023

For the past week or so I've been posting excerpts from my new book, Red Star over the Black Sea: Nâzım Hikmet and his Generation. You can find the book's prologue here, a few sections from the introduction here, and selections from Chapter 2 here. 

A few points to keep in mind: 

1) These are just excerpts, not entire sections. So, for example, the offerings on this post represent only a small part of Chapter 5. 

2) These sections do not necessarily appear contiguously in the book. In some places, I've cut intervening sections out while preparing the digital excerpts. 

3) There are no footnotes in the excerpts, but there are in the book (more than 1600 of them, as a matter of fact). So, if you're wondering where the information comes from, check the notes in the book. 

Something else that you'll notice when reading the excerpts: the book is about a lot more than Nâzım Hikmet. While the poet-communist is at the center of the story, you'll see that the book also details the lives of other, less well-known figures. Mainly, what I was interested in doing with this book was placing Nâzım within a particular context, then using the stories of this generation's lives to say something bigger about the times in which these people lived. 

I hope you like it. 

Red Star over the Black Sea: Excerpts from Chapter 2

Sunday, April 2, 2023

Over the past few days I've posted excerpts from the prologue and introduction of my new book, Red Star over the Black Sea: Nâzım Hikmet and his Generation. The book, which is published by Oxford University Press, is now on sale in the UK. It will be available for purchase in the United States starting in the first week of June. 

Below you'll find some excerpts from the book's second chapter. 

Red Star over the Black Sea: Excerpts from the Introduction

Saturday, April 1, 2023

After seven and a half years of working on my biography of Nâzım Hikmet, at times it's difficult to believe that the work is finally over. With the exception of teaching days and other times I was momentarily busy with something else, I woke up almost every morning between August of 2014 and February of this year thinking about this book. 

Not only did I wake up thinking about the book, but almost without exception I felt excited and very positive about the project. I hardly ever felt stuck or unsure of what I wanted to do with it. In this respect, Red Star over the Black was a lot of fun to write. 

So now what to do? It's hard. I think a lot of people feel a mild touch of postpartum depression after a project they've spent years on has come to an end. I can't say that I feel depressed about the book ending per se, it's just difficult to know what to think about now. I find myself flipping through the book, reading sections of it out loud, then wandering off distractedly to change the record that's playing or write some notes about a new project I'm interested in. 

Or posting excerpts from the book to my blog. 

Anyway, below you'll find some of the fruits of these labors, excerpts from the book's introduction. It's not the whole intro, but it should give you a good taste of what's there. 

Prologue: Tears of Joy

Monday, March 27, 2023

This morning I was minding my business as usual at the Borderlands Lodge when, fresh from emerging from a mid-morning sauna I happened to notice the snowy residue of footprints on my front walk. 

Well, who could that be? I wondered.  

It feels great to see this baby in print

It turned out to be the delivery of the author copies of my book, Red Star over the Black Sea. The book, which is published by Oxford University Press, goes on sale in the UK next week. It'll be available in the US at the beginning of June. 

After seven and a half years of working on this project, it's pretty amazing to finally hold the book in my hands. 

And what about you? Any interest in getting a copy of your own? If you're still on the fence, maybe checking out the prologue (sans footnotes) below will help you decide. 

In the meantime, please forgive these tears of joy...  

Regrouping in Belgrade N & P

Saturday, February 25, 2023

I've been away from the blog for a while, mainly because I was finishing up my book on Nâzım Hikmet. I finally did send up the final proofs a couple of weeks ago. I've been told the book will come out first in the UK (the publisher is Oxford University Press) on April 2. Apparently, it will be available in the US starting June 2. 

So, I've been holing up at the Borderlands Lodge. 

The book has been a long time coming. As I recount elsewhere, I came up with the idea of working on Nâzım in the summer of 2015, and started reading up on him in earnest in the fall and spring of 2015-2016. The years to follow took me on multiple trips to archives in Moscow, Istanbul, Amsterdam, and Washington, D.C. 

It was a great experience. I loved the research, and especially working in the archives. Researching in Moscow, especially, was thrilling, mainly because none of that material had ever appeared in books on Nâzım before. But the writing process was also quite interesting. When the pandemic began, I was in a position to shift entirely to writing. So, that's what I did every day. 

There are obviously much bigger things going on in the world right now. This is one little book in a universe of suffering that's taking place in Turkey, Syria, and Ukraine, alongside many other locations on this planet. 

On the other hand, this is what I've been doing for the past seven and a half years. I hope people enjoy it. 

Nâzım Hikmet Book Talk in Texas

Saturday, October 1, 2022

This past week I spent a few days in Austin talking about a book of mine that'll be coming out next year. 

I gave a book talk for
the Longhorn anti-Leninists of Texas 

It was a really great trip. Over the summer when I was in Istanbul I'd received an invitation to discuss the book on Nâzım Hikmet that I've been working on. The book, called Red Star over the Black Sea: Nâzım Hikmet and his Generation, isn't finished yet--I'm going through the copy-edited   draft right now--but it's supposed to come out (through Oxford University Press) in March of 2023.

Catching up in the 'Grade

Saturday, September 17, 2022

Today we had the Fall Festival parade in Belgrade. I'd forgotten about the event, but while Zooming with my parents and brother this morning I noticed the large numbers of people parking in front of my house and pedestrians walking up the street. 

Time to grab your fez and head to Belgrade

But that's how things go when you're living in the tenderloin district of Belgrade, Montana. Whether it's the Jingle Jog, the Christmas Convoy, or the Fall Festival, some form of alliterative amusement is always on the agenda. 

The Birthdays of Nâzım Hikmet

Saturday, January 16, 2021

These are busy times up at the Borderlands Lodge. The spring semester began this week, so starting up with classes again has been taking up a lot of my time. As hectic as the first week of the semester can be, it's really nice to see the students again. 

Yesterday marked the birthday of Turkish poet Nâzım Hikmet. Well, at least the 15th of January is the widely-accepted date for his birthday. At the same time, however, there is some disagreement regarding when exactly Turkey's best-known poet was born.  

According to Memet Fuat, the son of Nâzım's third wife Piraye and Nâzım's stepson, Nâzım was not born on January 15, 1902, but rather in late 1901. In his book Nâzım Hikmet: Yaşamı, Ruhsal Yapısı, Davaları, Tartışmaları, Dünya Görüşü, Şiirinin Gelişmeleri, Memet Fuat writes that Nâzım was born on November 20, 1901, but that "in order for him to not appear one year older for the sake of 40 days" (i.e., from Nov. 20 until the end of the calendar year), his parents chose to make his birthday January 15. Meanwhile, in one of the letters Nâzım's fourth wife Münevver wrote to him in the late 1950s, she notes that she had always thought his birthday was January 2. Nâzım, for his part, alternated between writing his year of birth as "1901" and "1902" in documentation that he completed at Moscow's Communist University of the East in the early 1920s. 

New article out: the Letters of Münevver Andaç to Nâzım Hikmet

Friday, May 8, 2020

Münevver Andaç

A new article of mine has been published. It discusses a series of about 500 letters--housed in archives located in Moscow and Istanbul, respectively. The letters were written to the Turkish poet Nâzım Hikmet, who was living in Moscow at the time, by his fourth (apparently common-law) wife Münevver Andaç, who was then still in Istanbul. Scroll down to the bottom of this post if you're interested in gaining access to the article. First, however, I'll tell you the story of how I came to work with these letters.  

Children of Trans-Empire: New Article re Nâzım Hikmet

December 12, 2018

It was springtime in Moscow, 1922, and Nâzım Hikmet was signing up for classes at the Communist University for the Toilers of the East.  KUTV, as the university was known by its Russian initials, was the Moscow-based school for communism where Nâzım Hikmet would study and teach for most of thenext six years.  Nâzım, who would go on to become one of Turkey’s most beloved yet controversial writers, was just twenty years old when he arrived in Moscow. The university had been opened the year before, in 1921. 

Nâzım Hikmet (left) with his friend 
and boon companion Vâlâ 

Nâzım had arrived in Moscow from Batumi, Georgia, with four comrades— Vâlâ (Nureddin), Şevket Süreyya (Aydemir), Şevket’s wife, Leman (Aydemir), and Ahmet Cevat (Emre)—whose surnames are all well-known to students of modern Turkey. The questionnaires that the five filled out were a couple of pages long and relatively straightforward, focusing mainly upon the prospective student’s family history and recent past. “What is your family’s social position?” “Did you participate in the civil war and, if so, in what capacity?” “What is your party background?”

“Do you write?” asked the questionnaire. “If so, then what?” 

“I write everything,” responded Nâzım.

“What is your street address in Moscow?”

Gde ia zhivu, Nâzım wrote. “Where I live.”