The Blacksmith's Daughter

Told with great affection for his characters, Selim Özdogan’s trilogy traces out the life of Gül, a Turkish girl who grows up in rural 1950s Anatolia and then moves to Germany as a migrant worker. Book one details her initially idyllic childhood, ruptured by her mother’s early death. Ever close to her loving father, Gül grows into a warm-hearted, hard-working young woman. The Blacksmith’s Daughter is a novel full of carefree summers and hard winters, old wives’ tales and young people’s ambitions – the melancholy beauty and pain of an ordinary life. ‘Reading it was like falling in love. If everyone read this book, the world would be a better place – more considerate, more liveable, more tolerant.’ ?Fatih Akin, director of The Edge of Heaven; ‘The book’s muted poetry all the way to its quiet ending warms the soul like later summer wind gently stroking through hair.’ Sächsische Zeitung; ‘The novel enchants its readers with the sincerity and love with which it assesses the weight of the simple things in life.’ Fachdienst Germanistik; ‘A mature, light, wise book.’ Kreuzer magazine