Frank Wynne, chair of this year’s Booker judges, noted that translating 'Tomb of Sand' presented “huge challenges” because the novel is about words, language and storytelling, not just characters and plot. Another judge added that it is “safe to say this [novel] is like nothing else you have ever read.”
Shusaku Endo may not have liked the title “greatest Japanese Catholic novelist,” but his works—including ‘Silence’—are powerful meditations on the nature of belief and the vitality and viability of Christianity.
A tiny population of about 60,000 Armenian Christians remain in Turkey today. Most, uprooted from villages in eastern Anatolia, now live in neighborhoods in Istanbul.
Long before the earthquakes in February, the viability of the Christian community in Samandag had been under cultural and economic threat. Many from the city’s minority Christian community had already departed, seeking economic or educational opportunities elsewhere.