Reşat Nuri Güntekin

 

An Enemy of Women
Original Title : Bir Kadın Düşmanı

 

Novel

Sara, daughter of Adnan Pasha, goes to the wedding of a family member in a small town of Western Anatolia. Almost all the men in town are interested in her, with the exception of Ziya, whose nickname is Homongolos. He is an ugly man, an enemy of women, who continuously belittles and ridicules Sara. She in return, just for the sake of revenge, manages to influence Homongolos in such a way that he eventually falls in love with her. However it turns out that Homongolos, afraid to love Sara, has no choice but to commit suicide.

 

Selected reviews

 

There are two important reasons why Reşat Nuri is still being read after so many years: because he upheld moral values and because he was a pioneer in critical realism in the Turkish novel. Fethi Naci

 

According to Emil Birol, it can be said that of Reşat Nuri Güntekin’s novels, only seven ((From the Lips to the Heart, Green Night, Falling Leaves, Kızılcık Dalları, An Old Illness, The Windmill, Blood Feud)) are told as first person narrations and are based on social and psychological premises. Birol adds that the rest of the novels are told by true life ‘characters’ and are written as ‘journals’ or ‘hearsay’.  Birol says that only ‘An Enemy of Women’ is written as ‘letters’. Ahmet Oktay

 

Nearly all the novels of Reşat Nuri Güntekin tell of Anatolian cities, towns and villages in a vivid form; his language and style is flawless and flowing.  The heroes are taken from real life. Türker Acaroğlu

 

Not a single writer just sits down and writes.  Every writer has a system rationing time. At the same time, it’s always been a source for curiosity as to how Hüseyin Rahmi Gürpınar and Reşat Nuri Güntekin, who seem to write effortlessly, could fit so much writing into their lives. Adnan Binyazar, Cumhuriyet Magazine

 

I think we can make a list of the Turkish novels written in epistolary form or giving much space to letters. Hüseyin Rahmi Gürpınar's Mutallaka , Halide Edib Adıvar's Handan and Reşat Nuri Güntekin's An Enemy of Women.  We should also include Leyla Erbil’s Mektup Aşkları.Celal Üster, Cumhuriyet Kitap