East to West along a Turkish River

Meander

A wonderful, winding exploration of the fabled Turkish river, the pivotal meeting point between East and West, from the author of the acclaimed A Fez of the Heart.

This is a wonderful book by a wonderful writer

Meander is both the tale of a quixotic journey down a river and a wonderfully affectionate, funny, intimate and knowledgeable portrait of Turkey

There are few better travel writers than Jeremy Seal writing today, and none better on Turkey

Success and enjoyment in this book spring from the fact that Seal is equally at home in the past as the present... his great ability here is to convey something of the lives, the concerns and the nature of the people of the region

Meander takes us to a forgotten river and a land whose history and culture, significant as they are for bridging East and West, old and new, are all but neglected. It's wonderful stuff... a book that celebrates the dilemma in which Turkey finds itself, which records with sensitivity a story which is both epic and intensely personal... this is a fine observation of a landscape and its people and of a country whose efforts to define itself have been as circuitous as the river itself'

An excellent introduction to Turkish history for anyone planning a summer holiday

A charming, enviable journey… Seal’s book delivers on its promise of an unpredictable journey through an unfamiliar place

It’s an elegant and fitting tribute to the most famous river you’ve never heard of.

Writer and river are happily matched … History is his travelling companion

Seal is the best of companions; readers will enjoy every twist

[Seal] travels from the river’s source in the distant hills to the point where it finally drains into the Aegean, every bend revealing an entirely new perspective

Jeremy Seal is a travel writer, teacher and broadcaster with a life-long fascination for Turkey. His first book, A Fez of the Heart, was shortlisted for the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award. He is also the author of The Snakebite Survivors' Club, The Wreck at Sharpnose Point, and Santa: A Life, which was Radio 4's Book of the Week. He has written for the Sunday Telegraph, Sunday Times, Conde Nast Traveller, the Weekend Australian and the New York Times, among others. He lives in Bath.

The course of the Meander is so famously indirect that the river's name has come to signify digression - an invitation Jeremy Seal is duty-bound to accept while travelling the length of it in a one-man canoe. At every twist and turn of his journey, from the Meander's source in the uplands of Central Turkey to its mouth on the Aegean Sea, Seal illuminates his account with a wealth of cultural, historical and personal asides. 
 
It is a journey that takes him from Turkey's steppe interior - the stamping ground of such illustrious adventurers as Xerxes, Alexander the Great and the Crusader Kings - to the great port city of Miletus, home of the earliest Western philosophers. Along the way Seal unpicks the history of this remarkable region, but he also encounters a rich assortment of contemporary characters who reveal a rural Turkey on the cusp of change. Above all, this is the story of a river that first brought the cultures of East and West into contact - and conflict - with one another, its banks littered with the spoil of empires, the marks of war, and the detritus of recent industrialisation. 
 
At once epic, intimate and insightful, Meander is a brilliant evocation of a land between two worlds.

Jeremy Seal

An excellent, occasionally disturbing and very original book

In his [Seal's] enlightening book A Coup in Turkey, Menderes's story defies the simple political messages that are projected on to it . . . Seal's work is an excellent addition to any Turkey bookshelf, offering a beautifully wrought epitaph that Menderes's contradictory life, and the continuing aftershocks of his death, has long deserved

A compelling account of Menderes' rise and fall, part biography, part travelogue . . . The book's greatest strength is as a testament to the deep seam of authoritarianism that runs through Turkey's history, a reminder that Erdogan is a symptom as well as a cause of the country's current problems

The coup of 1960 may seem remote, but the forces it unleashed are still at work - perhaps more than ever, which is what makes Mr Seal's book so timely

Through the spellbinding career of a single, ill-fated leader, Jeremy Seal illuminates a bitterly divided country

Meticulously researched and vivid book... Seal is an evocative writer... [and he] paints a nuanced and largely sympathetic portrait of Menderes

Turkey's 1960 coup was a huge event that played out on an intimate scale. Interpreting it requires the tenacity of a reporter, the learning of an academic and the verve of a novelist. Luckily, Jeremy Seal possesses all these qualities, which he brings to bear on one of the most significant calamities of the modern Middle East. Read this book if you're interested in Turkey. Read it if you're interested in power, hubris and redemption. Read it

Christopher de Bellaigue, author of The Islamic Enlightenment

The road from Menderes to Erdogan is a twisted one, full of shadows, ghouls and strange delights. And I cannot imagine a better guide to it than Jeremy Seal . . . it has enough drama in it for a James Bond film . . . Seal takes us on a journey into a history that still lives, in a land still worth loving

A gripping, meticulously told political drama. With great skill, tenacity and genuine feeling, Jeremy Seal re-assembles the extraordinary build-up to Turkey's 1960 coup, its courtroom aftermath and its tragic denouement. In doing so, he presents a brilliant portrait of oscillating populism and pragmatism, military force and religious fervour, democracy and state brutality, that appears as relevant to today's world as it was sixty years ago

An excellent historical lens through which to view the country's political landscape

A page turning quest into the greatest judicial murder story of its time, but also a physical journey across Anatolia and into the violent passions of Turkish politics where "not taking sides" is not an option. Which is why this book is not just a revelation, but also a love letter to the contemporary nation, written by England's pre-eminent travel writer on Turkey

Lucid and multi-layered, backed by brilliant scholarship lightly worn, Jeremy Seal's gripping narrative moves effortlessly from the personal to the political as it charts the rise and fall of the man who, after Ataturk, reset the direction of the Turkish republic. It is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand modern Turkey

A deeply interesting meeting point between a historical account of a decisive period in the history of Turkey and a modern travelogue... A context that is vividly presented in Seal's impressive work. In A Coup in Turkey the reader will find a well-researched and thrilling book that provides a relevant approach to a relatively unknown period of Turkish history

A Tale of Democracy, Despotism and Vengeance in a Divided Land

The most dramatic, revealing and little-known story in Turkey's history - which illuminates the nation 
 
'Through the spellbinding career of a single, ill-fated leader, Jeremy Seal illuminates a bitterly divided country' Colin Thubron 
 
'Read this book if you're interested in Turkey. Read it if you're interested in power, hubris and redemption. Read it' Christopher de Bellaigue, author of The Islamic Enlightenment 
 
In the spring of 2016 travel writer Jeremy Seal went to Turkey to investigate perhaps the most dramatic, revealing and little-known episode in the country's history - the 'original' coup of 1960, which deposed the traditionalist Prime Minister Adnan Menderes. The story of Menderes - to his adoring supporters the country's founding democrat; to his sworn enemies its most infamous traitor - goes to the heart of the feud that continues to rage between the Western and secular ambitions of a minority elite and the religious and conservative instincts of the small-town majority. A Coup in Turkey is a thrilling account of the events leading up to the coup and the trials and executions that followed, a story of political subterfuge and score-settling, courtroom drama, state execution, authoritarian intolerance and ideological division. 
 
Seal travels through President Erdogan's Turkey, tracking down eye-witness accounts from survivors of the Menderes era in Istanbul, the historic metropolis, and the new capital at Ankara. As he expertly guides us through this extraordinary story, so the compelling parallels between past and present become strikingly clear, and he illuminates this troubled nation with a deep sympathy and love for the people and places he writes about. By focussing on one key event - one which many Turks regard with shame - this evocative, gripping portrait of Turkey recentres our understanding of the past and makes sense of one of Europe's most bewildering yet intriguing neighbours. 
 
'A wonderful writer' Robert Macfarlane

Jeremy Seal

Praise for A Coup in Turkey

An excellent, occasionally disturbing and very original book

In his [Seal's] enlightening book A Coup in Turkey, Menderes's story defies the simple political messages that are projected on to it . . . Seal's work is an excellent addition to any Turkey bookshelf, off ...

A compelling account of Menderes' rise and fall, part biography, part travelogue . . . The book's greatest strength is as a testament to the deep seam of authoritarianism that runs through Turkey's history, a ...

An excellent, occasionally disturbing and very original book

In his [Seal's] enlightening book A Coup in Turkey, Menderes's story defies the simple political messages that are projected on to it . . . Seal's work is an excellent addition to any Turkey bookshelf, off ...

A compelling account of Menderes' rise and fall, part biography, part travelogue . . . The book's greatest strength is as a testament to the deep seam of authoritarianism that runs through Turkey's history, a ...

An excellent, occasionally disturbing and very original book

In his [Seal's] enlightening book A Coup in Turkey, Menderes's story defies the simple political messages that are projected on to it . . . Seal's work is an excellent addition to any Turkey bookshelf, off ...

A compelling account of Menderes' rise and fall, part biography, part travelogue . . . The book's greatest strength is as a testament to the deep seam of authoritarianism that runs through Turkey's history, a ...

Books by Jeremy Seal

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