Human Landscapes from My Country: An Epic Novel in Verse

When, on the eve of the Second World War, Nazim Hikmet (1902-1963) — Turkey’s most acclaimed and popular poet — was sentenced to twenty-eight years in prison for his Communist beliefs, he embarked on the writing of his epic, Human Landscapes from My Country. This 17,000-line verse-novel is made up of a traveler’s vivid encounters with Turkish men and women from all walks of life. In colloquial language, Hikmet stages their private hopes and griefs, and through these many human dramas, he documents Turkey’s historic transformation into a secular republic. Human Landscapes from My Country is “lively . . . cinematographic . . . [able] to capture the least scholarly reader” (Denise Levertov).

Human Landscapes from My Country was published in a abridged English-language version by Persea Books twenty years ago. This new edition marks a major event in contemporary world literature.