Berji Kristin: Tales from the Garbage Hills

Arts & Ideas

BBC

Society & Culture

4.2 • 599 Ratings

🗓️ 8 February 2023

⏱️ 15 minutes

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Summary

Urbanisation, migration and ‘folk language’ are explored in the 1984 novel by Latife Tekin. The story is a carnivalesque fusion of contrasts like its title – where ‘Berji’ conjures images of an innocent shepherdess and ‘Kristin’ of a sex worker. There’s blind old Güllü Baba, rumoured to cure the ills caused by a nearby factory’s chemical wastewater. There’s Fidan of Many Skills, rumoured to know all the ‘arts of the bed’. There’s the rumour of roads, jobs, and clean water coming to Flower Hill: they never materialise. In his foreword to Berji Kristin: Tales from the Garbage Hills, John Berger crowns ‘rumour’ its ultimate storyteller. New Generation Thinker Sarah Jilani looks at the way the inhabitants of Flower Hill make sense of their disorienting transition from village life to shantytown in the story from one of Turkey's most influential female authors writing today.

Producer: Torquil MacLeod

Transcript

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0:00.0	Can I just say?
0:01.5	You're about to listen to a BBC podcast.
0:04.0	It's such a wonderful listen.
0:05.6	So nice.
0:06.5	There are loads more like it on BBC sounds.
0:08.8	Different paces, different heights.
0:10.6	The roof is buckling.
0:11.9	Where you can also listen to live sports commentary.
0:14.2	It's right foot goes for goal.
0:16.7	And then enjoy even more podcasts full of analysis and reaction to the big stories.
0:21.7	The stat that is astonishing is they ended with the lowest amount of possession.
0:25.2	And she's had to live with that.
0:26.8	So if you love sport, a passion, it's almost like a religion.
0:29.7	Listen on BBC Sounds.
0:31.7	Sort of expecting that every week now.
0:34.6	Hello, I'm Sarah Jalani, a new generation thinker working with Radio 3 and the Arts and
0:41.0	Humanities Research Council to share my academic research. And in this episode of the Arts
0:47.1	and Ideas podcast, I've written a short essay about Barji Kristen, a novel by the Turkish writer Latifet Tekin that provides a unique insight
0:57.9	into life in the makeshift migrant neighborhoods of Istanbul.
1:03.8	BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts.
1:08.3	Ever since, I can remember, there have been men, young and old, who forage the dumpsters
1:15.8	of Istanbul, Turkey's largest city.
	...

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