
Título: There Was and There Was Not
Autor: Meline Toumani
Sinopse: A young Armenian-American goes to Turkey in a "love thine enemy" experiment that becomes a transformative reflection on how we use—and abuse—our personal histories Meline Toumani grew up in a close-knit Armenian community in New Jersey where Turkish restaurants were shunned and products made in Turkey were boycotted. The source of this enmity was the Armenian genocide of 1915 at the hands of the Ottoman Turkish government, and Turkey's refusal to acknowledge it. A century onward, Armenian and Turkish lobbies spend hundreds of millions of dollars to convince governments, courts and scholars of their clashing versions of history. Frustrated by her community's all-consuming campaigns for genocide recognition, Toumani leaves a promising job at The New York Times and moves to Istanbul. Instead of demonizing Turks, she sets out to understand them, and in a series of extraordinary encounters over the course of four years, she tries to talk about the Armenian issue, finding her way into conversations that are taboo and sometimes illegal. Along the way, we get a snapshot of Turkish society in the throes of change, and an intimate portrait of a writer coming to terms with the issues that drove her halfway across the world. In this far-reaching quest, told with eloquence and power, Toumani probes universal questions: how to belong to a community without conforming to it, how to acknowledge a tragedy without exploiting it, and most importantly how to remember a genocide without perpetuating the kind of hatred that gave rise to it in the first place.
Contexto da obra
Quando a classificação é mais ampla, o contexto do livro costuma depender ainda mais de autoria, tema e edição. “There Was and There Was Not”, de Meline Toumani, publicado pela editora Metropolitan Books, em 2014 e com 304 páginas, integra a categoria Livros Variados. Por isso, autoria, edição e tema acabam tendo ainda mais peso na forma de apresentar o livro.
Editora: Metropolitan Books
Páginas: 304
Ano: 2014
Edição: First
Linguagem: pt_BR
ISBN: 9780805097634
ISBN13: 9780805097634
Sobre a editora
Os livros da editora Metropolitan Books costumam oferecer uma experiência de leitura densa e reflexiva, marcada por narrativas que exploram grandes temas históricos, sociais e políticos com profundidade analítica. O catálogo privilegia obras que investigam ciclos históricos complexos, como revoluções e impérios, além de biografias detalhadas que revelam as contradições pessoais e sociais de seus protagonistas. A linguagem tende a ser acessível, mas sem abrir mão do rigor intelectual, convidando o leitor a um envolvimento crítico com questões contemporâneas e passadas. Há também espaço para formatos variados, como o jornalismo gráfico e ensaios que misturam crítica cultural e política, o que amplia o espectro de abordagens dentro do catálogo da Metropolitan Books.
