In January 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany. Within two months, the Nazis had passed the Enabling Act of 1933, which allowed Hitler’s cabinet to pass laws without parliamentary consent. Six years later, this culminated in World War II, but one of its first major impacts was to put into effect an anti-Semitic policy. The result, as we all know, was a genocide that claimed millions of lives, and changed many more—perhaps for generations to come.
Ayse Kulin’s Without a Country traces the lives of one such family, though fictional. In 1933, a Jewish pathologist named Gerhard Schleimann, along with his wife Elsa, their children Peter and baby Suzi, flee Frankfurt for Zurich. From Zurich, fate takes the Schleimanns, like other German scientists and academics, to Turkey.
Turkey, newly emerged from its centuries of Ottoman rule, is striving to change itself. Ataturk envisions a modern Turkey, and to that end he is willing to invest in importing talent, knowledge and skill—in the form of men like Gerhard, who will teach in newly established universities, who will build the new Turkey.
But the road is not smooth. Not for Turkey, not for the Schleimanns. There are problems adjusting to a culture that is at times utterly alien and yet often so enticing that they cannot help but be drawn into it. There are their own interpersonal relationships, the misunderstandings and friction that arise in any marriage. And the face of a changing Turkey, at the same time. Not just a Turkey that is becoming modern, but a Turkey where a substantial part of the population also resents the change.
Though the bulk of Without a Country is devoted to Gerhard and Elsa, the story continues into that of their daughter Suzi, her daughter Sude, and her daughter Esra, who in 2016 is faced with the prospect of leaving her own homeland because her part-Jewish blood puts her at risk of being targeted.
Set against a backdrop of over eighty years of Turkey, this is an engrossing and insightful novel, a good balance between the personal side—the lives of the Schleimanns and their descendants—and the larger picture, the making of Turkish history. The characters, whether Elsa or Gerhard or the others peopling the novel, come vividly alive, but equally alive is the face of a country torn between a conservative past and a modern present.
One of the most interesting aspects of the book, especially for those not very familiar with Turkey’s history, is the insights Kulin offers into the role played by German immigrants in the establishment of modern Turkey: it’s not something widely known outside Turkey, and Kulin’s book acts as an eye-opener. At the same time, Without a Country is also a stark reminder of how the world does not really change: how the hatred and insularity of 1933 morphs only slightly into the hatred and insularity of 2016.
The book is a trifle lop-sided when it comes to the space devoted to characters—Esra, while an important character (and in some ways mirroring her great-grandparents?) has far too little by way of storyline.
On the whole, though, Without a Country is a fine, touching tale of human resilience and the power of love and hope.