“I wanted to know who my mother was. I spoke with those who knew her, researched history books, newspapers, and family archives. But in the end, to get closer to her, I relied on my intuition and imagination.”
— Kenizé Mourad
If you are a history lover like myself, here is an interesting novel that will take you from Imperial İstanbul to Beirut and then to India of Maharajas and finally to the war torn Paris of the Second World War. What is even more interesting is that the story narrated by the French writer Kenize Mourad is based on a true story of her mother Selma, an Ottoman Princess who was the granddaughter of Sultan Murad V. her childhood in İstanbul and then in Beirut, her arranged marriage to an India rajah and her tragic early death in Paris in 1941.
Selma Rauf Hanım Sultan
Kenizé Mourad, born shortly before her mother Selma’s death, discovered the truth about her parentage only at the age of twenty. After four years of meticulous research, she reconstructed the life of Imperial Istanbul, the Ottoman harem, the customs of wealthy Muslims in the late Empire, and the opulent world of India’s maharajas. Her novel tells the astounding and tragic story of an Ottoman princess who endured exile, a forced marriage to an Indian rajah, estrangement in foreign lands, and finally, poverty and an early death in Paris at just twenty-nine. The novel is an attempt of a daughter to unite with a mother she never knew.
Kenizé Mourad
The novel was originally written in French with the title ‘De la Part de la Princesse Morte’ in 1987 and had been translated to many languages and sold millions of copies round the globe. The English translation of the book is titled ‘Regards from the Dead Princess.’
Upon reading Mourad’s novel, you will find, time and again, that truth surpasses fiction, and that fate can be far less merciful to some of its children!
