Tag: Circassians

Wrapping Up

Time for some short takes to clear the desk for the coming year. In Urs Widmer’s Der Geliebte der Mutter (My Mother’s Lover) the first-person narrator tells the story of his mother’s life, beginning with the death of her lover, many years after her own death. Erwin died as he lived best, leaning over a …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/12/27/wrapping-up-4/

All-American Muslim Girl by Nadine Jolie Courtney

Circassians! The father of Allie, title character and first-person narrator of Courtney’s novel, comes from a Circassian family. They’re an ethnic group originally from the Northern Caucasus. After their encounter with an expanding Russian Empire went the way of most encounters between small peoples and the empire, the vast majority of Circassians were expelled to …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/11/07/all-american-muslim-girl-by-nadine-jolie-courtney-2/

Let Our Fame Be Great by Oliver Bullough

Review in brief: Encounters between Russia and the peoples of the Northern Caucasus have not been happy ones, and have generally ended badly for the smaller nations involved. From the Nogai driven into the Black Sea in the 1700s to the Circassians mostly slaughtered or removed to the Ottoman Empire in the 1860s to the …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2011/06/07/let-our-fame-be-great-by-oliver-bullough/