Memed, My Hawk

A tale of high adventure and lyrical celebration, tenderness and violence, generosity and ruthlessness, Memed, My Hawk is the defining achievement of one of the greatest and most beloved of living writers, Yashar Kemal. It is reissued here with a new introduction by the author on the fiftieth anniversary of its first publication. Memed, a high-spirited, kindhearted boy, grows up in a desperately poor mountain village whose inhabitants are kept in virtual slavery by the local landlord. Determined to escape from the life of toil and humiliation to which he has been born, he flees but is caught, tortured, and nearly killed. When at last he does get away, it is to set up as a roving brigand, celebrated in song, who could be a liberator to his people—unless, like the thistles that cover the mountain slopes of his native region, his character has taken an irremediably harsh and unforgiving form. Memed Grows Up A Serf To A Vicious Overlord On The Thistle-clad Plains Of Turkey’s Taurus Region. When His Plan To Escape Is Dashed, And The Young Woman He Loves Murdered, Memed Makes For The Mountains To Become An Outlaw. Before Long He Has Transformed From A Young Rebel To An Infamous Bandit, The Scourge Of Corrupt Oppressors And Hero To The Poor. With Vividness And Simplicity, Kemal's Classic Novel Evokes The Fierce Beauty Of His Country And The Struggles Of Its Oppressed People. THE SLOPES of the Taurus Mountains rise from the shores of the Eastern Mediterranean, on the southern coast of Turkey, in a steady ascent from the white, foam-fringed rocks to the peaks. Young Memed, a peasant turned brigand, fights to save his sweetheart from a forced marriage and to free his Turkish village from tyranny.