Portrait of a Turkish Family

Irfan Orga was born into a prosperous family of the old Turkey under the Sultans. His mother was a beauty, married at thirteen, and lived in the total seclusion befitting her class. His grandmother, who also lived in their home, was an eccentric autocrat, determined at all costs to maintain her traditional habits. The 1914 War, however, brought ruin to the family and a transformation to Turkey. The red fez was ousted by the cloth cap, and the family was forced to adapt to an unimaginably impoverished life. In 1941 Irfan Orga arrived in London where, seven years later, he wrote this extraordinary story of his family's survival.