Kaya Genç

Kaya Genç is the author of three books from Bloomsbury Publishing: The Lion and the Nightingale: A Journey Through Modern Turkey (2019), Under the Shadow: Rage and Revolution in Modern Turkey (2016), and Istanbul Anthology: Travel Writing through the Centuries (2015). He has contributed to the world’s leading journals and newspapers, including two front page stories in The New York Times, cover stories in The New York Review of Books, Foreign Affairs, and The Times Literary Supplement, and essays and articles in The New Yorker, The Nation, The Paris Review, The Guardian, Financial Times, The New Statesman, The New Republic, Time, Newsweek, and the London Review of Books.

Articles

Imagining the “Other”
Nazi propagandists instrumentalized and distorted Turkey for the political purposes of the Third Reich.
Kaya GençNov 15, 2015
- Around the World
- History
Turkey Under Western Eyes
"Turkish Awakening" attempts to move beyond an orientalist epistemology.
Kaya GençSep 6, 2015
- Politics
Murder Mysteries After the Death of the Author
That Sophie Hannah has managed to write a traditional Poirot novel is both the success and failure of this book.
Kaya GençJul 19, 2015
- Fiction
Hercule Poirot and Us
Contributor Kaya Genç examines actor David Suchet's role as Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot.
Kaya GençOct 5, 2014
- Television
Crossing the Border of Fiction
Kaya Genç on Teju Cole
Kaya GençAug 7, 2014
The Sacred and Its Discontents: On Jenny White’s “Muslim Nationalism and the New Turks”
Kaya GençJul 12, 2014
- Politics
Surviving the Black Sea: An appreciation of David Stoliar, the sole survivor of the 1942 Struma disaster
A tribute to David Stoliar, the sole survivor of the 1942 Struma disaster.
Kaya GençJun 19, 2014
The Embassy of Gossip: Zadie Smith’s First-Person Plural
First-person plural is the least used fictional POV, but it is necessary for political action — and both are steeped in gossip.
Kaya GençMar 1, 2014
Auerbach in Istanbul
Erich Auerbach’s life in Istanbul, after escaping the Nazis, and his greatest work, "Mimesis"
Kaya GençJan 12, 2014
Such, Such Were the Miseries: Down and Out in Paris and London and Istanbul
Being down and out is a universal, timeless story. Just ask George Orwell.
Kaya GençJan 2, 2014
Around the World: Jeremy Scahill’s “Dirty Wars,” Latin America’s Alfredo Jaar, and Istanbul’s Museum of Innocence
Caille Millner, Elena Shtromberg, Kaya Genç, Tom GallagherDec 8, 2013
The Friends of the Museum
The Museum of Innocence is 500 days old; the things in the shops around it are older.
Kaya GençDec 8, 2013
- Around the World
- Fiction
Turkey’s Glorious Hat Revolution
Wearing the wrong hat could get you killed.
Kaya GençNov 11, 2013
- History
Ali Kemal: Martyred Journalist and Iconic Traitor
In 1922, Ali Kemal, the great-grandfather of London’s mayor Boris Johnson, was lynched in Turkey. Ali Kemal was a journalist, not a dissident.
Kaya GençSep 3, 2013
Ebooks v. Lattes
What would George Orwell choose: ebooks or lattes?
Kaya GençAug 10, 2013
Turkey Is Just a Thread That Ties All These Interesting Ideas Together
Kaya GençJul 15, 2013