As with many short story collections, Kenan Orhan's "I Am My Country" has a pair of brilliant stories, a couple of decent ones, and another pair that I'm blaming for the fact that it took me a full year to finish the book in its entirety.

The lead story, "The Beyoğlu Municipality Waste Management Orchestra," was previously published in the Paris Review, and is definitely the best in the book. It will be a little too heavy on the metaphorical for some readers, but it does a very clever job of commenting on Turkish politics in a way that Anglophone readers will "get." Most of the rest of the stories are a little more straightforward, although there's one late in the book which is set in the mid-1950s that crosses over from heavy metaphor into fantasy.

In all, an entertaining read.

Upon my first reading of the stories in this collection, “I Am My Country,” I felt that I did not connect with or relate to the stories in any way. However, upon deep reflection, I came to appreciate their efforts to shed light on the oppressive regime of its democratically elected ruler. The stories collectively appear as a denunciation of Turkey’s politics and particularly of its authoritarian leader, President Erdoğan. They also appear to denounce traditional Muslim customs and beliefs. The first story, titled “The Beyoğlu Municipality Waste Management Orchestra” makes a mockery of Erdoğan’s restrictive policies, exaggerating the government’s use of censorship to control its citizens’ thoughts and perceptions. The second story, “The Stray of Ankara,” depicts a woman’s intent and efforts to assassinate the president.

The third story also appears obliquely to denounce the president: When a town’s mine collapses and over 50 of the miners are killed, the president visits the town only to be met by an angry mob of villagers that blames him for the deaths. In the next story, a young man and his sister argue over the value of traditional Muslim customs and its misogynistic practices. President Erdoğan has extolled motherhood, saying repeatedly that "no Muslim family" should consider birth control or family planning so that they may multiply their descendants. " He also condemns feminists and has said that men and women cannot be treated equally.

Given the rise of dictatorships around the world and the threats America has witnessed against its own democracy, I applaud the author, Kenan Orhan’s, efforts to demonstrate the importance of a free press, freedom of religion, and equal rights for everyone. Thank you to NetGalley, Mr. Orhan, and Random House for giving me an advanced reader’s copy of this important book. My review of the book is VOLUNTARY.

A fascinating insight into Turkish culture and politics that I didn't know I needed. Each short story is transcendent.

Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC. All opinions expressed in this review are my own.

This was a delightful collection of short stories. Some were just ok, but the ones that I loved, I really loved. These stories took me to a part of the world that I haven't visited, and I enjoyed meeting the vibrant characters and rich cultures!

Oh what a gem of a book! Short stories which each had their own flavour but a core thread connecting them all. I loved the exploration of largely low-income and women-led narratives.

3.5 stars. Thank you to Net Galley and Random House for the ARC in exchange for my honest review. I was interested in this collection of stories as it looks at the lives of ordinary people in Turkey. Some are strange and fantastical; others deal with the reality and brutality of war, political unrest and escaping a land falling apart. Some are playful and others are heartbreaking. Overall, the people in the stories are resilient and have a will to survive. They find the light and that glimmer of hope even in the bleakest of times.

A bold collection of stories that celebrate the resilience of the human spirit through oppression and adversity. The author places common people in uncommon circumstances with a touch of magical realism and a splash of hope.

Power collection of magical, bittersweet, heartbreaking short stories of scratching out lives amidst tragic conflict and authoritarianism in Turkey. I highly recommend this beautifully written collection.

This took me a while to read and that's all on me. Being from the same country as the author, there was a lot of internal monologue and dissecting compared to how I normally would have approached a story collection. I think Orhan's writing was compelling and beautiful and it paints an accurate picture of Turkey and the impacts of the current politics.
Thank you so much to Random House for the ARC of this one.

I Am My Country, the debut short story collection by Kenan Orhan, has ten stories with common theme of war and government oppression. All of the stories are centered around a tumultuous Turkish political climate, and the way that the citizens adjust to their new circumstances. I do not know anything about this, the government of Turkey or the wars and coups that the Turkish people have endured. I only have these stories as a reference. With a mixture of stories that use elements of fables and magical realism, and some taunt and fantastic writing, I understand how the citizens feel. These stories do in a short period of time what many novels take hundreds of pages to do: draw us into the world, make us understand, and make us feel empathy for the characters.

All of these stories are good in their own ways. A few that I like best:

“The Beyoğlu Municipality Waste Management Orchestra” opens the collection with a woman who works as a trash collector. She starts to find musical instruments then musicians in the garbage on her route. She collects them and has an orchestra in her attic, something that is banned with the new government.

“Mule Brigade” A story where mostly reluctant soldiers drive into a village to round up and kill the work animals so that the villagers are not using them to smuggle contraband across the border.

“The Birdkeeper’s Moral” A man who catches birds in homemade cages to make a living runs into a girl whom he loved decades earlier. He tries to find a way to impress her, with the help from an owl who is giving him advice.

Many of these stories are set up like fables, but most of them end as cautionary tales. Orhan’s ability to paint a picture of the world that is crumbling around the character’s feet, while the characters mostly remain hopeful for the future, makes I Am My Country really stick out. It has been a long time since I have read a collection quite as powerful and moving as this one.

I received this as an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

It's been a while since I've read a book of short stories, but Kenan Orhan's book was a really good way to get a feel for the political and religious climate in Turkey of which I a unfamiliar. Of course, I found some of the stories
difficult and disturbing, I think the author was able to portray the feelings of the people on many different levels, and with very good writing. These stories will definitely make you think and question what is going on over there, and how is it that I didn't know any of this? I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in learning more about the present day Turkish experience in a very different way. Thank you Netgalley and the Publisher for an opportunity to preview this book in exchange for an honest review.

But an interesting book. I liked all the short stories and Everybody had problems and they had to solve them and somewhere We're based on tradition and mixed with modern ideas. My favorite was the bird cage. It was an interesting way of looking at the conflicts with greece and turkey and somehow the war got involved too. Yes a m I was person who made bird cages and also capture birds as well. This Al appears to him and he starts talking to him and then we come friends.. When he was growing up he had a friend d e d t e d e j u It was part of a very wealthy family. His father was also a bird capture as well. He had a rough childhood because his father kept pushing him to do things. This is how we met this woman as a young girl. They lost touch because of the war and stuff went on. His father was Taken away by the turkisoldiers. He stayed at home for a year and then he was displace does well. It was just an interesting take on how when the british left things went very sideways on cyprus. I can see this happening all the time because people stolen stand people. This woman came back into his life later on and he remembers how kind and sweet she was and he made her a bird cage and she really loved it. He also had the bird's well who helped him capture other birds. The bird became very sad I think because he wanted freedom. It was a great book

I have to admit, I chose this book from NetGalley based on the recommendation of writers I love—Anthony Marra, Andrew Sean Greer, among others—and I was not disappointed. I especially enjoy learning about places I've never been, so these stories, set in Turkey and depicting the ordinary lives of its people, were especially compelling. This "fiercely imaginative debut collection" is exactly as advertised, with captivating tales of talking animals and unique, inspiring characters transcending the dark realities of their lives. I highly recommend it.

As a bonus, the author is an Emerson College MFA grad. Which I considered good news for the current Emerson creative writing major in my house. :)

This marvelous short story collection by Turkish American Kenan Orhan sketches life in Turkey as one in which society struggles with an evolving state of affairs. Each story in this deeply-felt melange is unique, but religion and politics are the threads that bind them. The policies of Islamist President Erdoğan features prominently in the collection.

The stories address the erosion of Turkey’s secular state and its democratic principles where characters receive prison sentences for minor infractions. “That was the way things seemed now—it was impossible to keep track of what could get you in trouble.” One woman fears that government policies will end with “chains to beds, multiple wives, child-birthing factories.” Another story recounts a protest rally where people “expel in one grand catharsis every issue taken with the government.” We read about a decaying mine where workers’ deaths are met with platitudes, and where a flower shop owner trains her dog to carry an explosive to a rally in which the president is in attendance. This will be the one example where terrorist policies would be applicable.

The impact of Erdoğan’s authoritarianism on daily life is no better described than in the first story. In this imaginative flight into magical realism, readers meet a trash collector in the Beyoğlu District of Istanbul, where Erdoğan served as District Head of the Welfare Party in his early career. She wends her way through shoulder-wide alleys where she recovers what she calls the small grandeurs of life, remnants of lives stolen by government decree. Like that of a composer who places his instruments and himself in the bin for collection and incineration. “I enjoyed collecting the composer’s trash if only for the reprieve of tending to something precious, of being entrusted with the death of the beloved machinations of one’s art.” Perhaps this scene speaks to the changes in 2013 when then Prime Minister Erdoğan announced the privatization of theaters and the mayor of Istanbul increased civil servant control over city theater repertoire and artistic content. The trash collector, as others, will find herself stripped of civil rights, facing imprisonment for the “inability to reduce my life along the guidelines of presidential decrees.”

Readers who are aware of current events will find many references, but this knowledge is not necessary for enjoying this engaging collection. The stories are well crafted treasurers of human experience, and readers will find the array of delightful characters and their interesting stories worth a read.

Many thanks to Random House Publishing Group and NetGalley for providing this eARC.

In general, I read more novels than short fiction, but there are times when short fiction accomplishes things novels can't. That's the case with Kenan Orhan's I Am My Country. The stories collected here are set in or near Turkey and explore forms of resistance, primarily to government suppression, but also in interpersonal relationships.

I know relatively little about Turkish politics, so part of what makes this collection so effective in my mind is that it lets us see the region from multiple perspectives: different generations, different faiths, different regions; different economic statuses. My favorite story is The Beyoğlu Municipality Waste Management Orchestra. A waste management worker finds increasingly unusual items in the trash: first a musical score, then instruments, then people—musicians, artists, and more. Each "leveling up" of what comprises trash is a result of increasingly frequent prohibitions on items or practices that the government finds threatening. As this brief summary suggests, these prohibitions first focus on music—only certain composers and certain types of instruments are allowable—but they increase in breadth.

If, like me, you knowledge of the current situation in Turkey is limited, you'll have to be an active reader. You'll need to draw inferences about past events, varying social norms, and the meaning of individual words. But this work is worth the effort. For anyone interested in world literature, I Am My Country will make rewarding reading.

I received a free electronic review copy of this title from the publisher via NetGalley; the opinions are my own.

I really wanted to like this collection, and even though the stories dealt with realities of everyday family life in Turkey, the protests and violence, the author lacked the depth of words to engage my emotions. I found the stories dry and lacking a noted difference in tone even as different narrators were used across the stories.

I Am My Country
By Kenan Orhan

The author is a Turkish American. With this collection of stories, he presents to the reader both sides of his heritage. His stories touch on what it's like to belong to two cultures on the one hand – and yet to not precisely fit in either one.

His stories deal with topics which we have heard about from afar, but he brings them up much closer for the reader's edification. He has stories of the crackdowns of the Turkish government, the imposition of Islamic mores on the citizens, the treatment of women, and the Turkish government's ongoing battle with the PKK and other Kurds within their borders.

I found his stories to be eye-opening. I especially liked "The Beyglu Municipality Waste Management Orchestra" because it shows how, by attrition, the Turks have lost more and more of their culture to government bans. Through these stories, the author makes clear his dislike of what Erdogan and his government is doing to the country as a whole. He points out the brainwashing that occurs when only one school of thought is allowed (see "Mule Brigade").

I learned a lot from this collection. I would recommend this book to anyone wanting a clearer, truer view of Turkey today.

Kudos to debut story collection author Kenan Orhan for his newly published work. These short stories pack an immense punch. Through these stories, the author highlights what has been occurring in Turkiye over the years through the voices of ordinary Turkish people. In their unique ways, each protagonist of a story finds their way to cope with and or rebel against authoritarianism and restrictions against freedom. From the absurd (as a coping mechanism) to the melancholic, the stories portray the deep anguish and at the same time - hope - for the future. In my opinion, the stories are such that now and in years to come, this collection of stories will be studied as great literary works that capture the depth and breadth of Turkish political, social, and cultural issues of these years. The writing is brilliant. There is so much in each story to parse out, delve into, and dissect. I particularly want to highlight The Beyoglu Municipality Waste Management Orchestra (isn’t the title intriguing?), I Am My Country, and The Birdkeeper’s Moral. I’m looking forward to more of Kenan Orhan’s works in the future. I highly recommend this book. Many thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this book.

This book was a collection of short stories that centers around Turkey. The stories were all really well written and easy to read but didn't wow me like I hope it would. The magical realism was a nice touch and I did enjoy reading the book. Thanks for my gifted copy

Quite simply,, Kenan Orhan’s debut collection of stories #I Am My Country, left me breathless. Lyrical, heartfelt, gut wrenching, the ten stories that comprise # I Am My Country mark the rising of a shining new star in the literary galaxy. # I Am My Country is a bases loaded home run that firmly establishes Kenan Orhan as an author to be reckoned with. Standing Ovation !