Enlightenment, by Maureen Freely
by Natalie Bakopoulos
Near the middle of Maureen Freely’s Enlightenment, one character explains to another that in Turkey, “the first thing they make you do in a murder case is put you through a reenactment.” One of the book’s central storylines explores the supposed murder of a mentor of a group of leftist students in Istanbul in the early 1970s. And the novel itself functions as a reenactment, a piecing together of stories and perspectives. But Enlightenment is far more than a murder mystery: it’s about imperialism and politics and human rights, about love and memory, about the subjectivity of truth.
