Book description
Irfan Orga was born into a prosperous family in the twilight of the
Ottoman Empire. His mother was a beauty, married at thirteen, who
lived in the seclusion of a harem, as befitted a Turkish woman of her
class. His grandmother was an eccentric autocrat, determined at all
costs to maintain her traditional habits. But the First World War
changed everything. Death and financial disaster reigned, the Sultan
was overthrown and Turkey became a republic. The family was forced to
adapt to an unimaginably impoverished life. In 1941 Irfan Orga arrived
in London, and seven years later he wrote this extraordinary story of
his family's survival.
Irfan Orga's official birthday was March 1st 1908, though even
he did not know the actual date, once suggesting that it could be as
late as 1909. He came to England in 1942 on a three year posting from
the Turkish air force. While there he became romantically involved
with a young Norman-Irish woman, Margaret Veronyca. Living with a
foreign woman was a crime in Turkey at the time, and Orga was stripped
of his rank, forced out of the air force and, eventually, forced out
of the country, leaving for England in 1947 (he was convicted in
absentia in 1949).
After Margaret's divorce had been finalised in 1948, they
married. While his wife began working her way up the hierarchy of
publishing, Orga pursued several menial jobs. He also began writing,
and published books on many areas of Turkish life; cookery, history,
children's books and a controversial biography of Ataturk as well as
the autobiographical story of his family (Portrait of a Turkish
Family, 1950) and a work on the Yuruk nomads of the High Taurus
mountains (The Caravan Moves On, 1958). Irfan Orga died in 1970.
Ates Orga is a writer and a record producer who has taught at both
Surrey and Istanbul Technical Universities. His books include
biographies of Beethoven and Chopin, and he contributes regularly to
Cornucopia, Andante, and International Piano.
