They Burn Thistles

He is the architect of unforgettable literary heroes and a beacon for writers of the generations that followed him

Elif Shafak

[A] master storyteller

New York Times

The second part of the stirring Memed chronicle, by the man acknowledged to be Turkey's greatest contemporary writer

Washington Post

Kemal's ability to delve into human nature and bring out the universal traits in his characters made his novels accessible to all sections of society

Independent

[Kemal's] work, and, when all is said and done, his life, are injected with a burning humanism and a fierce belief in mankind's potential for good over evil. In showing a better way forward, shaping the lives of his characters with tolerance and understanding, Kemal's fiction occupies a moral plane far higher than that of human conflict and base revenge

Observer

The sequence of events in the novel could not be more exciting… It is like a myth, but the mythic quality is given concreteness in the distinct personalities of the villagers… This novel is a worthy successor to Memed, My Hawk

Paul Theroux, New York Times

Kemal has become Turkey's first world-class novelist…They Burn the Thistles is thus a valuable addition to the body of literature for society's sake

Washington Post

There are a lot of facts and folklore in the story along with delightful fantasy, all told with an intimacy of detail that makes for fine reading. Kemal's descriptions of the Turkish landscape, animals and plant life are sharp and vivid. The action is told in the grand manner of the Homeric tradition, but Kemal doesn't miss a butterfly, a hard-backed iridescent beetle or the yellow narcissi of Anatolia. There is the smell of dried sweat and blood, but there is also the sweet scent of stirrup-high mint at the edge of a bubbling brook

Los Angeles Times

One of the modern world's great storytellers. To read him is to be reminded that life itself is a story. He writes fearlessly, like a hero

John Berger

They Burn the Thistles is an epic story of a bitter war during the 1920s between the poor Turkish peasants of the Taurus Mountains of Anatolia and the greedy Aghas who covet their land... British critics said that Yashar Kemal had a feeling for the soil in literature that recalled Thomas Hardy and Ignazio Silone

New York Times