Salman the Solitary

Driven out of his native Kurdish village by invading Russians, Ismail Agha has built himself a house above the village of his exile. In his household is his bodyguard Salman, the Turkish boy he adopted after finding him in a cave, more dead than alive. Ismail has many enemies. In the barren mountains of Anatolia, Kemal sets a tale of vengeance and bloodlust, tender love and passionate hatred, at the centre of which is the bond that ties Ismail and young Salman, who is devoted to his master but jealous of his natural son Mustafa. Tension has existed between the two almost since Mustafa's birth but, when rumours begin to fly through Ismail's household, the knives are drawn and no-one can predict whose life will be at risk. Turkey's greatest novelist has produced an epic tale of love and death, intensified and complicated by racial prejudice.