The Sound of Fishsteps is a prize winning novel by Turkish writer Buket Uzuner

Buket Uzuner

Buket Uzener is a writer, author of novels, short stories and travelogues. She trained as a biologist and environmental scientist and has worked at universities in Turkey, Norway, the United States, and Finland. Her fiction has been translated into seven languagesand has been on the Turkish...

 originally published in Turkish by Remzi Kitabevi in 1993 and in English translation in 2002.

Plot summary

Turkish prodigy Afife Piri, a descendent of Ottoman-Turkish cartographer Piri Reis

Piri Reis

Piri Reis was an Turkish Ottoman admiral, geographer and cartographer born between 1465 and 1470 and died in 1554 or 1555....

, is invited, along with 87 other international selects, to take part in a UN sponsored retreat in an unnamed Scandinavian city. At the retreat she encounters a man claiming to be the French novelist Romain Gary

Romain Gary

Romain Gary was a French diplomat, novelist, film director, World War II aviator. He is the only author to have won the Prix Goncourt twice .- Early life :Gary was born in Vilnius under the name Roman Kacew...

, with whom she falls in love, and the descendents of other iconoclastic geniuses including Joan of Arc

Joan of Arc

Saint Joan of Arc, nicknamed "The Maid of Orléans" , is a national heroine of France and a Roman Catholic saint. A peasant girl born in eastern France who claimed divine guidance, she led the French army to several important victories during the Hundred Years' War, which paved the way for the...

, Anaïs Nin

Anaïs Nin

Anaïs Nin was a French-Cuban author, based at first in France and later in the United States, who published her journals, which span more than 60 years, beginning when she was 11 years old and ending shortly before her death, her erotic literature, and short stories...

, Nehru and Edvard Grieg

Edvard Grieg

Edvard Hagerup Grieg was a Norwegian composer and pianist. He is best known for his Piano Concerto in A minor, for his incidental music to Henrik Ibsen's play Peer Gynt , and for his collection of piano miniatures Lyric Pieces.-Biography:Edvard Hagerup Grieg was born in...

. The mysterious director of the retreat, Dr. Gunnar, however, has a secret agenda that is slowly revealed.

External links

• Extract from Sounding Fish Traces at Bogazici University website.