Portrait of a Turkish Family

<p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1); background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1)>Irfan Orga was born into a prosperous family in the twilight of the Ottoman Empire. His mother was a beauty married at thirteen who lived in the seclusion of the harem as befitted a Turkish woman of her class. His grandmother was an eccentric autocrat determined at all costs to maintain her traditional habits.</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1); background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1)>But the First World War changed everything. Death and financial disaster reigned the Sultan was overthrown and Turkey became a republic. The family was forced to adapt to an unimaginably impoverished life. In 1942 rfan Orga arrived in London and seven years later he wrote this extraordinary story of his family's survival.</span></p><p></p>