''Regards from the Dead Princess'', also titled ''Memoirs of an Ottoman Princess'', is a 1987 debut novel by
Kenizé Mourad
Kenizé Hussain de Kotwara, generally known as Kenizé Mourad, (born 1939) is a French journalist and novelist. Until 1983, she was a reporter for the ''Nouvel Observateur'' working in the Middle East. She then turned to literature, publishing th ...
based on her mother's life. It was published in France in 1987 where it sold well. It has been translated into 30 languages and it has a sequel.
Plot
The book tells the story of Selma Rauf Hanim, granddaughter of the Ottoman Sultan
Murad V, from her childhood when the Turkish nobility is expelled from the country and scattered on the shores of the Mediterranean. She studies at a French Catholic college in Lebanon. Lack of money obliges her to agree to an arranged marriage with a Shiite Indian prince. The heroine who does not resign herself to the weight of tradition, but moves to Paris in the middle of the Second World War. She is pregnant, but she will finally own herself.
Background and publication
The book took four years to write as
Kenizé Mourad
Kenizé Hussain de Kotwara, generally known as Kenizé Mourad, (born 1939) is a French journalist and novelist. Until 1983, she was a reporter for the ''Nouvel Observateur'' working in the Middle East. She then turned to literature, publishing th ...
wanted to get the research right. Mourad had already worked as a journalist, but she decided to switch to novels. Her mother was an Ottoman princess and her grandfather was Sultan Mourad V, but still she wanted to get it all correct. She spent time on small details to write a book about her family. No one seemed to know what colour the buttons were on the uniforms of the Sultan's guards so Mourad spent some time finding that detail out.
Mourad says there is a difference between Muslim and Western women. She cites a proverb that says man is the head and woman is the neck. The neck decides the direction that the head goes in.
[
]
Reception
The book was a bestseller in France. The book in English is said to be "awkward writing" with details and feuds that make it too long. The late section where the hero survives in Paris is "hauntingly memorable".
Further reading
After further research in India, Mourad, continued the story of her family in ''Les jardins de Badalpour'', published in 1998 and subsequently translated into twelve languages.[
]
References
{{reflist
Novels set in Paris
1987 French novels