Çalıkuşu, or The Wren, is a novel by Reşat Nuri Güntekin

Resat Nuri Güntekin

Reşat Nuri Güntekin was a Turkish novelist, storywriter and playwright. His most known novel, Çalıkuşu is about the destiny of a young Turkish female teacher in Anatolia; a movie was filmed on this book in 1966, and a TV series were produced in 1986...

 written in 1922, about the destiny of a young Turkish

Turkish people

Turkish people, also known as the "Turks" , are an ethnic group primarily living in Turkey and in the former lands of the Ottoman Empire where Turkish minorities had been established in Bulgaria, Cyprus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Greece, Kosovo, Macedonia, and Romania...

 female teacher named Feride in Anatolia

Anatolia

Anatolia is a geographic and historical term denoting the westernmost protrusion of Asia, comprising the majority of the Republic of Turkey...

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Plot summary

The events in the novel take place in the early twentieth century, in a warworn Ottoman Empire that is about to collapse. Most of the novel is narrated in the first-person point of view by Feride. In the first section, Feride narrates the events that brought her to the alien hotel room which she indicates she is in. It is revealed in this section that Feride is the orphan daughter of an army officer and as a teenager attended Lycee Notre Dame de Sion in the winter and stayed with one of her late mother's sisters during the summer holidays. She was given the nickname "the Wren" during her time at school for her vivacity, a characteristic that was considered unusual and even a bit inappropriate for Muslim girls at the time. She was engaged to her cousin, Kamran, whom she left the day before their wedding, upon discovering that he had been unfaithful to her, and ran away from home to become a teacher in Anatolia. The second section is Feride's diary, in which she narrates her life as a teacher.

Translations

This book was translated into English as The Autobiography Of A Turkish Girl by Sir Wyndham Deedes

Wyndham Deedes

Sir Wyndham Henry Deedes CMG DSO was a British Brigadier General and was also the Chief secretary to the British High Commissioner of the British Mandate of Palestine.- Early life :Deedes was born in 1893 in Kent, England...

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Adaptations

In 1966

1966 in film

The year 1966 in film involved some significant events.-Events:Animation legend Walter Disney, well known for his creation of Mickey Mouse, died in 15 December 1966 of acute circulatory collapse following a diagnosis of, and surgery for, lung cancer...

, Çalıkuşu was made into a movie and in 1986 into a TV series.

In English

• Reşat Nuri Güntekin- Information about Reşat Nuri Güntekin on an official website on Turkish culture
• Feminist Perspectives in Edith Wharton and Reşat Nuri Güntekin: a Comparative Study of the House of Mirth and Çalıkuşu - A study on feminist perspectives in Çalıkuşu