Defne Suman, The Silence of Scheherazade

The Silence of Scheherazade, written by Turkish novelist Defne Suman, was first published in 2015 in Turkey and Greece. It made its English language debut in August of 2021. Set in the ancient city of Smyrna, the story is about four families whose lives intertwine during the decline of the Ottoman Empire, as told by a mysterious narrator named Scheherazade. Suman said of her novel, “my book is taking place early 20th century in the Ottoman Empire. Ottoman Empire is about to dissolve, about to disappear from the face of history. It’s the end of the first World War which is 1914 to 1918, and as the Ottoman Empire is disappearing, is dissolving, the greater forces, the greater countries, meaning England, France, a little bit the United States, Italy, are trying to distribute the land; who’s going to get what, and what’s really happening to the lives of people who are living on that land. This is basically the story, The Silence of Scheherazade, is the unspoken history of what really happened back then… and take a look what really happened to human beings when Ottoman Empire was turning into what we know as the modern Turkish republic today.”

During the conversation, Suman goes into detail about the historical events occurring during that time, the burning of Smyrna, her fondness for 100 year-old narrators, and her day job as a yoga instructor. When asked about whether she translates her own books to English, she commented, “Language is a very funny thing… you don’t translate word by word, you’re translating an energy of a sentence and that energy of the sentence you need a certain grammatical structure to give the energy… the time, the possibilities, a lot of things are hidden in the grammar that we don’t notice when we speak the language as a native speaker.”