Book Review: “Turknama”
Author: Meena Prabhu
Language: Marathi
Genre: Travel Diary
Pages: 278
Cost: 250/-
Publisher: Mauj Prakashan
First Published in India: 27 August 2006.
Traveling has been my passion over the years along with reading, but strangely I never read any books on traveling. May be because I don’t want to miss the adventure of experiencing it myself while traveling. But there are very minute chances of me traveling to ‘Turkey’ in near future and my friend highly regards this book so I decided to read this book. And now I am fan of Meena Prabhu’s writing. I am going to read all the books written by her.
As the book’s name suggests the book is about ‘Turkey’. Author Meena Prabhu actually travel to Greece and Turkey and wrote her experience as one book. But publisher made it into two different books ‘Greekanjali’ and ‘Turknama’. Meena Prabhu did tremendous job by describing almost every part of Turkey in the book. And I feel like I traveled with her all along. She not only describe the famous places in Turkey she included history, geography, culture in her book. She enlightened the beauty of the country historically, geographically and culturally. She described nature, beaches, sunsets such a way I felt I actually witnessing it. She talked about the rich history of Turkey right from Romans, Greeks days to current government. Turkey is blessed with very rich history. Many dynasties ruled the country and their history is fascinating. But most fascinating personality of Turkey was their national hero Kemal Pasha who literally created new country out of Turkey. Anybody who is interested in international history must learn life of Kemal Pasha.
Meena Prabhu is very much successful in portraying culture and lifestyle of Turkey nationals. But what I like most is how she compared their culture and lifestyle with Indian. She surprisingly found many similarities. I believe reason behind traveling not only discovering unseen world or people but also you want to compare your world with the people of other part of the work. And when you find some similarities you feel closer to that place irrespective of distance or language. But what Meena Prabhu did best through this book is showed way to travel and explore the unseen world.
After reading this book I decided two things. One whenever I’ll get chance I am going to Turkey. And second thing is I am going read all the books written by Meena Prabhu. I say this is ‘Must Read Book’ for everyone. If I have to rate this book I will give it 10 out of 10.
Books by Meena Prabhu,
1. Maza London
2. Sukhanidhi Tuza Maza
3. Mukhvatyanmagche Chehare, Diana Aani Charles
4. Dakshinrang
5. Meksicoparv
6. Chinimati
7. Ejiptaian
8. Greekanjali
9. Turknama
