‘The Limits of Westernization: A Cultural History of America in Turkey’ by Perin E. Gürel (Columbia University Press, 273 pages, $49) One of the most significant Ottoman novels of the 19th century, Ahmet Rifki’s “Felatun Bey and Rakim Efendi,” appeared in a new English edition in 2016.
First published in 1875, the story centers on two stereotypical characters in Istanbul, dramatizing the question of modernization and Westernization.