Serenade for Nadia

SERENADE FOR NADIA

In this heartbreaking Turkish novel based on the real-life sinking of a refugee ship during World War II, an elderly professor leaves America to revisit the city where he last glimpsed his beloved wife.

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 tasked with looking after the enigmatic Maximilian Wagner, an elderly German-born Harvard professor visiting the city at the university’s invitation. Although he is distant at first, Maya gradually learns of the tragic 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 nearly 800 Jewish refugees perished after the ship carrying them to Palestine was torpedoed off the coast of Turkey, Serenade for Nadia is both a poignant love story and a gripping testament to the power of human connection in crisis.

Serenade For Nadia, the number one bestseller in Turkey in 2011, reached 1.000.000 copies in sales, was translated into several languages, and published in countries  such as Germany by Klett-Cotta, USA by Other Press.

When Zülfü Livaneli’s novel Serenade was published in the USA in March 2020, it made a big impression. Published under the name Serenade for Nadia and attracting significant attention, the book was chosen as the “Favorite Book of the Year” by the readers of the Boston Globe, one of the most followed and respected daily publications in America. International popular culture e-magazine PopMatters also chose Serenade as the “Best Book of the Year“. The magazine commented, “The book is not only a tribute to everything that makes Turkey beautiful but also a tribute to the suffering of its people, the complex difficulties they face in coming to terms with their past and building a livable future.” The Wall Street Journal also spoke of Livaneli as a strong, fearless, deep narrator. Source.

Praise for “Serenade for Nadia”

“A great book about a lifelong love.” – Karen Kruger (Frankfurter Allgemeiner Zeitung)

“This book, which is a well-written thriller, is preoccupied with the past in order to tell the story of the Turkish present” – Christiane Schlötzer – (Süddeutsche Zeitung )

“The title of this epic book is ‘Serenade’, but compositionally it is a symphony that reads like a classic.” – Achim Engelberg (Neue Zurcher Zeitung)

“ … An exciting and informative book that you will not be able to put down. ” – Ekkehart Rudolph (Stuttgarter Zeitung)

” … An immensely thrilling novel ” – Barbara Frischmuth (The Press)

Turkey 2011, Greece 2013, Germany 2014, Bosnia and Herzegovina 2014, USA 2020, Albenia 2021, Spain 2023

This novel has been published in Spain by Galaxia Gutenberg under the title Serenata para Nadia (2023).