Giannis Marinos Hall, The Friends of Music Society, Athens 5th September 2023 

Anna Pataki

His first novel was published in Greece in December 1999, with a preface by Mimis, his dear friend and colleague. I had discovered the book in the catalogue of a Spanish agent and was both intrigued and sceptical by the name, a famous composer writes a novel, how good can it be. I asked to read the, available, english translation and fell under the spell. 25 years and 10 books later, I still remember this forst impression. The great eunuch of Istanbul is one of these, rare, books that can build the name of a writer for the decades to come, and as Frango, it’s translator, puts it a book that dispels one of the most prominent myths of orientalism about harem life. Mikis also notes 

His next book, Bliss, 2001, is set in Stockholm of the seventies, in the world of the emigrants and it is there precisely that he started writing it in 1975. It was completed thirty years later. In a discussion that we had some years ago, after reading his beautiful personal account in the introduction for Fisherman and son, ….., he told me, if I recall well that the writing was there from the very beginning, together with music and it was the immediate success of his music that made him invest himself to it for many years. 

His third book, Mututluk, what a beautiful Turkish word, a novel of 500 pages is one the books that we call in the publishing world ambitious, meaning that its goal is to conceive a wide spectrum, multifaceted, in the occurrence the complex universe of modern Turkey. I and it perfectly makes it. 

The book was a sensational success, gets B&N Discover great new writers prize in US and best the endorsement by a great Turkish writer, Yasar Kemal. In the 25 years of our collaboration and friendship, I dare to say, my impression is that his heroes are two, Yasar Kemal and Elia Kazan, a third maybe being Mikis… 

The success of Mututluk gives him, I think, the feeling of security that opens the way to the great books that follow… 

His last book, under translation by Frango, On the back of the tiger, takes us back to Salonica, place of exile of Abdulhamid II. The frame is familiar to us, Greek readers, from Isidoros Zourgos’ Few and one nights, it will be very interesting to see how these two books can have a dialog… 

I can go on and on talking about all the wonders of Zulfu’s oeuvre, about himself, as an intellectual, a public speaker, a friend, a host,…all composing the reality of a great man. Reading his response to the questions of Thanassis Niarchos in the joint interview with Maria Farandouri for TA NEA, beautifully translated by Frango, I couldn’t not think how true about his way to approach his subject every time is the following thing he says

We are all born… 

I asked a month ago Frango, his first translator, what is that most characterises Zulfu, what is Zulfu most of anything else, and here what she said to me.