Love in Exile

By: Ayse Kulin, Kenneth Dakan - translator

Narrated by: Adriana Sevahn Nichols

The bestselling author of Last Train to Istanbul returns with a tale of love defying all boundaries.

Sabahat, a beautiful young Muslim woman, is known in her family for her intelligence, drive, and stubbornness. She believes there is more in store for her life than a good marriage and convinces her parents to let her pursue her education, rare for young Turkish women in the 1920s. But no one - least of all Sabahat herself - expects that in the course of her studies she will fall for a handsome Armenian student named Aram.

After precious moments alone together, their love begins to blossom. Try as she might to simplify her life and move on, Sabahat has no choice but to follow her heart's desire. But Aram is Christian, and neither family approves.

With only hope to guide their way, they defy age-old traditions, cross into dangerous territory, and risk everything to find their way back to each other. One of Turkey's most beloved authors brings us an evocative story of two star-crossed lovers inspired by her own family's history.

©2008 Ayse Kulin (P)2016 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved. Translation © 2016 Kenneth Dakan.

A coloful and uplifting story for the soul

I feel I know and comprenhend much better Turkish people, their culture, many religious roots and traditions, and acknowledge their significant mark in world history and civilization. Ms. Kulin is a wonderful ambassador of all peoples. God bless her and I'm eager to keep reading her books (Last Train to Istanbul and Rose of Sarajevo are fantastic pieces as well).

Need to google characters or get written book

Well-performed, engaging story. However, as an American with little exposure to Turkish names, it was very hard to follow at first. I picked it up and stopped various times, until I finally powered through enough to get the gist of who was who. There’s A LOT of characters. Silly me, about 60% of the way through the book I realized I also had the written kindle version. It has two very helpful diagrams of two of the three families involved. Sadly, it does not have one for Aram’s family. So today I went back and read several of the first chapters I had listened to, when it had been so confusing. It all became a lot clearer. Anyhow, the narration has just enough emotion to keep it engaging without going overboard. It was interesting to learn about this chaotic and important period in Turkish history. In fact, I had family who left Turkey right around the time period this novel started so it was particularly intriguing for me. I also liked the end where Ms Kulin speaks a bit about what happens to the characters, all her real life relatives, after the book ends

Social structure

Overall a great book for the historical details. and characters can be more detailed and still curious about Armenian parts.

I really got into this story! Now for "Joy" to be translated into English!

I would rate this book as PG - 13 (or older!), because there were a few parts that were a bit racy. Most of the book is appropriate for any age, if it is being read aloud and the parent is good at editing as they read. The last chapter makes me believe this book is based on real lives, which I somehow hadn't realized. If you like books rich in culture, family dynamics, love, hope, tragedy, and flawed, but beautiful, people, I highly recommend this book. Thanks for writing this, Ayse!

Narrator clearly doesn’t speak Turkish

I have read other books by this author, and I might still read this one in Kindle format, but I absolutely had to stop listening to this as an audiobook! The narrator clearly doesn’t speak any Turkish and doesn’t even know the basics of pronouncing Turkish words. It’s actually just plain offensive that so little research would be done on speaking a foreign language. After forgiving several mistakes along the way, I hit the wall after about 30 minutes.