From one of Turkey’s most beloved authors, a heartrending novel that brings to light tragic details of the real-life sinking of a Jewish refugee ship during World War II.
Istanbul, 2001. Maya Duran is a single mother struggling to balance a demanding job at Istanbul University with the challenges of raising a teenage son. Her worries increase when she is asked to look after the enigmatic Maximilian Wagner, an elderly German-born Harvard professor visiting the city at the university’s invitation. He is charming yet distant at first, but Maya gradually learns of the terrible circumstances that brought him to Istanbul sixty years before, and the dark realities that continue to haunt him.
Inspired by the 1942 Struma disaster, in which a shocking betrayal by Allied forces led to the deaths of nearly 800 refugees fleeing the Holocaust, Serenade for Nadia is both a poignant love story and a gripping testament to the power of human connection in the midst of despair. Revisiting the past, Zülfü Livaneli beautifully illustrates the lengths we must go to in order to find the closure we need.
