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Alexander Christie-Miller
ALEXANDER CHRISTIE-MILLER  is a writer and journalist based in Istanbul. His writing about Turkish politics and culture has been published in Newsweek, the Times, the Atlantic, and other publications. He is a regular contributor to The White Review.


Articles Available Online


Ada Kaleh

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Issue No. 17

Alexander Christie-Miller

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Issue No. 17

When King Carol II of Romania set foot on the tiny Danubian island of Ada Kaleh on 4 May 1931, it was said among...

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October 2015

War is Easy, Peace is Hard

Alexander Christie-Miller

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October 2015

At around midday on 19 July, Koray Türkay boarded a bus in Istanbul and set off for the Syrian...

Good People opens in Berlin in 1938 Thomas Heiselberg has grand plans to make the company he works for the biggest market-research group in Europe Meanwhile, in Leningrad, Sasha Weissberg has plans of her own, inspired by the intellectual conversations in her parents’ literary salon When war breaks out and fate brings Sasha and Thomas together, they will both be brought to account Published to rapturous reviews in more than ten languages, Good People is a tour de force: sparkling, erudite, a glimpse into the abyss Its young author, Nir Baram, has been compared to Dostoyevsky and Grossman, and has won several awards in Israel, including the Prime Minister’s Award for Hebrew Literature   In this extract, we find 22-year-old Sasha working as a literary editor of confessions for the NKVD, Stalin’s secret police, under Stepan Kristoforovich, whom everyone calls Styopa At the end-of-year department celebrations Sasha’s husband, Maxim Podolsky, mimics Styopa in a skit written by political prisoners Sasha wants Styopa to give her details of the whereabouts of her missing younger twin brothers, Vlada and Kolya, who were taken away when their parents were arrested, but Styopa pulls her aside to let her know that he is about to be arrested himself In a last act of devotion to his favourite colleague, Styopa assures Sasha that she will be untouched by the disaster about to befall him – and tells her the location of one of her brothers — J G   *     The band started playing jolly music, and the head of the first department came over the loudspeakers ‘Dear comrades, you are all invited to the dance floor’   ‘My health has improved a lot, and I look forward to getting back to work But soon I’m going to want to speak with you’ She was surprised by her defiant tone   Did he understand the equation that had come clear to her on the train? Enough time has passed Without progress in the matter of the twins, I can’t go on working here, and, for my part, you can execute me She was stricken with anguish: maybe she had wasted too much time,

Contributor

August 2014

Alexander Christie-Miller

Contributor

August 2014

ALEXANDER CHRISTIE-MILLER  is a writer and journalist based in Istanbul. His writing about Turkish politics and culture has been...

Forgotten Sea

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Issue No. 11

Alexander Christie-Miller

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Issue No. 11

I. As I stood on the flanks of the Kaçkar Mountains where they slope into the Black Sea near the town of Arhavi, the...
Occupy Gezi: From the Fringes to the Centre, and Back Again

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July 2013

Alexander Christie-Miller

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July 2013

Taksim Square appears at first a wide, featureless and unlovely place. It is a ganglion of roads and bus routes, a destination and a...

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fiction

January 2014

Vertical Motion

Can Xue

TR. Karen Gernant and Chen Zeping

fiction

January 2014

We are little critters who live in the black earth beneath the desert. The people on Mother Earth can’t...

Art

Issue No. 10

Patterns

Christian Newby

Art

Issue No. 10

poetry

November 2014

Lay and Other Poems

Pere Gimferrer

TR. Adrian Nathan West

poetry

November 2014

Ode to Venice Before the Sea of Theaters (from Arde el mar, 1966)   The false cups, the poison,...

 

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