Maureen Freely talks to Matthew Stadlen

Novelist Maureen Freely talks about her latest work, My Blue Peninsula, which explores the truth about the Greek, Armenian and Assyrian genocides and the Turkish state’s fierce denials about them.

The novel centres around Dora Giraud’s attempts to explain her tangled family history to her adult daughters. It follows her own narrow escape from an extremist attack in Istanbul that killed her ex-husband. What she has uncovered reveals her to be a direct descendant of both the genocides’ victims and perpetrators. Freely herself has been involved in the movement to open up the dark chapter of Armenian history.

Freely was born in the US but grew up in Turkey. She now lives in the UK and teaches at Warwick University. Freely is author of eight novels and a translator of classic 20th-century Turkish literature including of five works by Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk. She is a former chair and president of English PEN and a campaigner for writers and freedom of expression internationally. Here she talks to broadcaster and author Matthew Stadlen.

Part of the festival’s programme of American literature and culture