Half a century in the memory of a city
The Enlightened Face of a City is a comprehensive book of urban memory and personal recollections, drawing on Cahit Solakoğlu’s own life, memories and literary work to portray fifty years of Erzurum between 1930 and 1980.
Through Solakoğlu’s recollections from childhood to adulthood, the book introduces the people of the city, its everyday life, cultural circles and figures who left their mark on Erzurum’s social life during the Republican era. The “enlightened faces” in the title refer, in the author’s words, to people who contributed to the city and helped illuminate the cultural life of Erzurum and the country.
From memories and poems to portraits of people
The 488-page book consists of four main sections: “Erzurum in Poems and Memories,” “The Wise Men of Erzurum,” “Our Family – The Solakzades,” and “Song of the Highlands.”
Beginning with poems and personal recollections, the narrative continues with people who left their mark on Erzurum’s cultural and social life, family history, and “Song of the Highlands,” a memoir-novel spanning the years 1950–1980.
Drawing on one person’s memory, the book records Erzurum’s half-century of “enlightened faces” through its people, memories and lived experiences.
From personal memory to urban memory
Published in 2011, the book approaches Cahit Solakoğlu’s life story not simply as a personal memoir, but as a way of making visible the people, social life and cultural environment of Erzurum in the recent past.
Personal recollections, poems, family stories, photographs and documents thus become fragments of an urban memory stretching from the 1930s to the 1980s.
Our Role
Editorial Direction and Publication Management: Bringing together texts of different kinds, poems, recollections, photographs and documents within a shared editorial language and structure; transforming them into a readable, consistent and visually coherent publication system, and managing the book’s publication process.
