tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37163313210115989362012-02-21T09:48:31.982-08:00E.D.I.W.T.B is a) an Elvis Costello song; b) how I spend my days; c) a blog about reading and writing.Sophie Hardachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02571027538201714160noreply@blogger.comBlogger441100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3716331321011598936.post-82742111648627327732012-02-20T05:17:00.001-08:002012-02-20T05:20:06.443-08:00

Last year, my friend Nathalie asked me to co-write a treatment for a TV drama. Nathalie is a successful French scriptwriter, so it was a bit like being offered a mini-masterclass in writing for TV - and being paid for it. Well, this is what I learned: 1. Writing screenplays is fun You get to write with a friend, swap ideas and even act out scenes - compare/contrast with the lonesome

Sophie Hardachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02571027538201714160noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3716331321011598936.post-73688766899414565252012-02-07T08:54:00.000-08:002012-02-07T09:44:16.828-08:00

"Lord and Giver of life... we praise thee for Charles Dickens whose birth we commemorate today." Amen to that, and Happy Birthday, Mr. Dickens! Charles Dickens, who died from a stroke mid-way through Edwin Drood, would have been 200 today. His wish was for a small, private funeral at Rochester Cathedral; what he got was a three-day public procession through Westminster Abbey. Well, writers and

Sophie Hardachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02571027538201714160noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3716331321011598936.post-76109005265275599862011-12-21T13:30:00.000-08:002011-12-21T13:30:13.481-08:00

More than four months since the last post! One giant leap from sunny picnics to Christmas bake-offs! Here's my excuse: I had to finish that novel. And having finished it and handed it in last week (well, the first draft) I couldn't quite face writing a blog post about... finishing the first draft. I will, at some point, probably in January. In the meantime, I've found that baking is an amazing

Sophie Hardachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02571027538201714160noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3716331321011598936.post-91386945898645063592011-08-11T12:06:00.000-07:002011-08-11T12:13:34.111-07:00

"My name is Casey. Hello, I'm telling you about my borough, Hackney. In the morning people eat their daily fry-up in their local cafe. It is fattening, filling, sizzling and sloppy. I will be taking you to my local cafe. In your world you can steal but in mine you can't. So stealing is not necessary, thanks." Written as part of a literacy project on Thursday afternoon, the message was aimed

Sophie Hardachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02571027538201714160noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3716331321011598936.post-47188804941731423722011-07-01T04:18:00.000-07:002011-07-01T04:19:27.939-07:00

One of the most heartening things for a writer is to see a forgotten author being rediscovered. It's comforting because it means that even if this generation fails to appreciate you, even if critics hate it, buyers snub it and you're 900,000th in the Amazon rankings, your book might just outlive them all and catch the eye of a true conoisseur wandering into a second-hand bookshop by the Seine in

Sophie Hardachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02571027538201714160noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3716331321011598936.post-23596256563335538242011-05-18T04:45:00.000-07:002011-05-18T04:45:41.690-07:00

Autumn 2009. A dinner party in western Paris. Roman Polanski has just been arrested for having sex with a 13-year-old girl in 1977, and there's a separate controversy over culture minister Frederic Mitterrand, who has written about his experiences as a sex tourist in Thailand. The guests are outraged. Not because of the sexual abuse, but because of the philistines who want to bring down two great

Sophie Hardachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02571027538201714160noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3716331321011598936.post-20432798052602338522011-05-12T07:57:00.000-07:002011-05-13T13:48:00.103-07:00

"If I speak in the tongues of men and angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal..." Yes, it's the Corinthians! And no, we're not at an English wedding, you can put away your fascinator. It's just that I'm reading Paul's letters for a new project, which for once means I'm part of a broader trend. The advantage of living in Paris is that you can spot the hottest

Sophie Hardachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02571027538201714160noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3716331321011598936.post-58681801019379410472011-04-18T07:04:00.000-07:002011-04-18T07:04:29.140-07:00

  Parties, flowers, reunions with old friends, champagne, dancing...since the Registrar was published on April 1, life has turned into one big celebration. This morning I picked up the bouquets I'd put into storage after my launch party in London. They were so voluminous (see picture) that I had to take a cab home. As soon as the driver pulled out of Soho I began to boast about my book launch,

Sophie Hardachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02571027538201714160noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3716331321011598936.post-30463150500011480022011-04-05T16:07:00.000-07:002011-04-05T16:07:10.904-07:00

Publishing a book has simplified my life in many ways. Take people, for example. When I was an unpublished author, I sometimes found it difficult to decide whether I liked or disliked a person. Now the answer is pretty easy. I like anyone who buys my book, and the more copies they buy, the more I like them. Imagine, then, my delight when a couple of bookshops asked today if I could sign their

Sophie Hardachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02571027538201714160noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3716331321011598936.post-35117344126694396642011-04-01T02:36:00.000-07:002011-04-01T02:36:15.039-07:00

Oh happy, happy day. The Registrar's Manual for Detecting Forced Marriages is on sale now. Amazon says there are only 5 copies left in stock. Surely that's a good sign?

Sophie Hardachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02571027538201714160noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3716331321011598936.post-43034626488359449282011-03-15T07:30:00.000-07:002011-03-15T07:50:56.320-07:00

"Do you remember the name of that naughty boy in your class at the German School in Tokyo? The one who ate the emergency rations in his earthquake backpack?" I asked one of my brothers on the phone last night. "Erm..." he hesitated. "I think that was actually me." The boy who ate the quake crackers was one of many anecdotes from our first stay in Japan, when I was about three years old. My

Sophie Hardachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02571027538201714160noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3716331321011598936.post-23520238604208298562011-03-04T02:55:00.000-08:002011-03-04T02:55:00.427-08:00

"I'm a poet. I know bugger-all about boxing," said my fellow judge, got up, put down his scoring pad and walked out. "But we all know bugger-all about boxing!" I called after him. "I thought that was the point!" At least I hoped that was the point. Admittedly, we were all a bit surprised by the fact that there would be real, actual boxing. As in: mouth guards, padded head protection, a

Sophie Hardachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02571027538201714160noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3716331321011598936.post-7258445653206203522011-02-24T02:41:00.000-08:002011-02-24T02:42:24.711-08:00

I'm not a natural when it comes to full-contact fighting. It's something about the stress of being attacked, the guilt of punching another person, and the physical pain. "Sure, but how about the adrenaline - don't you find that once you're in the ring, it's such a thrill?" an ex-boyfriend asked me after my first (and last) term of taekwando at university. The university was in tropical

Sophie Hardachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02571027538201714160noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3716331321011598936.post-78941664060784674162011-02-22T08:11:00.000-08:002011-02-22T08:11:18.839-08:00

I'm reading "Nella Last's War - The Second World War Diaries of Housewife, 49" as part of my research for novel number two, and am enjoying it so much that I have to keep telling myself to put it down and get back to writing. Here's an extract from 29 November, 1939: My next-door neighbour has every religious service on at all hours, and finds comfort in it. I wish I could do so - I would only

Sophie Hardachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02571027538201714160noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3716331321011598936.post-9664477825175304772011-01-24T05:37:00.000-08:002011-01-24T05:37:35.480-08:00

The undercover police scandal in the UK seems to get worse every day, with some anonymous former officer now saying he had no choice but to sleep with the environmental activists he spied on - he just did it to fit into the "promiscuous" environmental scene. Talk about blaming the victims. From a German perspective, the whole affair looks particularly nasty because it's so reminiscent of Stasi

Sophie Hardachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02571027538201714160noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3716331321011598936.post-83377106048286394652011-01-19T08:28:00.000-08:002011-01-19T08:28:27.326-08:00

A couple of years ago, when I was still working for Reuters, I was sent on a hostile environment training course taught by a former marine in Bangkok. We practiced first aid on various Reuters bureau chiefs, found our way out of a minefield using only a pencil, and got kidnapped by Thai actors who were covered in fake blood. The reason I'm writing about this is that I'm staying in a hotel in

Sophie Hardachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02571027538201714160noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3716331321011598936.post-76082495382201797032011-01-11T00:42:00.000-08:002011-01-11T01:01:26.194-08:00

Ta-daaa! The cover for "The Registrar's Manual for Detecting Forced Marriages" is ready! I'm incredibly pleased with it. I've always loved illustrated covers (and, for that matter, illustrated books) and I think the designer, Alessandro Gottardo, has done a very nice job. The book will only be released in April, but if you want to read the first chapter you can visit my brand-new website:

Sophie Hardachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02571027538201714160noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3716331321011598936.post-40442876817656877572010-12-27T09:21:00.000-08:002010-12-27T09:38:19.673-08:00

My editor told me to take a week off, so I flew to Berlin for a few days (German Christmas! Family! 5,000 calories per day!) and when I came back, I decided to clear out various mystery boxes that have been cluttering my flat for about a year or so. One of them contained a stack of folders from my days as a Reuters trainee. Picture the bittersweet moment as I was reunited with seven-year-old

Sophie Hardachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02571027538201714160noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3716331321011598936.post-76095759386309574452010-12-06T20:21:00.000-08:002010-12-27T07:39:49.667-08:00

It started with a scratching, scurrying sound in the middle of the night. "Did you hear that?" I asked Dan. "Yes," he said. "Squeak," said someone in the rafters. "Was that a mouse?" I asked stupidly, still half asleep. "Probably." Long pause. "Though it sounds pretty big for a mouse." Oh, the beauty of big old country houses. The one Dan lives in is particularly attractive to rodents

Sophie Hardachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02571027538201714160noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3716331321011598936.post-47346445272069943392010-11-17T10:15:00.000-08:002010-12-27T07:42:25.558-08:00

Last week, I went to two readings in Paris in the hope of learning a couple of tricks to help me sell my book next year soaking my soul in the joy of literature. I came away feeling heartened and inspired, not least because both events were absolutely packed, despite the miserable weather. Ann Mah read from her debut novel, Kitchen Chinese, at Shakespeare&Co on Monday, attracting so many people

Sophie Hardachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02571027538201714160noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3716331321011598936.post-62416227654451459582010-11-08T08:41:00.000-08:002010-11-08T08:42:58.664-08:00

Overheard in my local cafe, which has decent central heating and is very popular with writers escaping their freezing garrets: "...so I'm working on this novel about four women: one is terminally ill, another has terrible problems with her mother, and we follow their personal stories and how they intertwine, and, well, it's all very complex and it ends badly." (Sighs) "And you?" "Oh, you see,

Sophie Hardachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02571027538201714160noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3716331321011598936.post-55424442864792705712010-10-19T04:47:00.000-07:002010-12-27T07:34:43.531-08:00

...is that you can read up on the history of women in science without being bombarded by ads offering "stunning Moldova girls waiting for your call".

Sophie Hardachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02571027538201714160noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3716331321011598936.post-66859040255924566442010-10-12T07:04:00.000-07:002010-12-27T07:34:27.774-08:00

The proofs for book 1 are almost ready! Glad we spotted the bit where it says "Sophie Hardach asserts his rights...". Let's hope the typesetters get the right PDF file.* * Speaking of which: what I find most surprising about the Great Franzen Recall is that this doesn't happen more often. My own editing process involved various electronic copies (FinalFinalDraftTHIS ONE PLEASE.doc) as well

Sophie Hardachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02571027538201714160noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3716331321011598936.post-15203864495734765142010-10-10T09:57:00.000-07:002010-12-27T07:41:59.881-08:00

Dorothy could emit, at any hour of the day or night, a waterfall of debutante chatter (...) 'I'm desperately well, thanks, how are you?' (...) It was some time before she was to put her head round Jane's door and announce, 'Filthy luck. I'm preggers. Come to the wedding.' (Muriel Spark, 'The Girls of Slender Means') Writing a historical novel is a great excuse for re-reading old favourites

Sophie Hardachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02571027538201714160noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3716331321011598936.post-16002186165134383622010-09-24T05:02:00.000-07:002010-12-27T07:40:05.289-08:00

My week at Swarthmoor Hall, a 16th-century country house where the first Quaker meetings were held, has produced more material than I could possibly use in my next novel. Guess that's how authors end up writing trilogies. I was given access to a collection of 17th-century printed journals and soon lost myself in the adventures of Margaret Fell, rendered in a wonderfully clear, fresh and vivid

Sophie Hardachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02571027538201714160noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3716331321011598936.post-37977569468062364562010-09-03T03:59:00.000-07:002010-12-27T07:40:18.579-08:00

Last night I opened my letterbox and found two neatly hand-addressed envelopes with UK stamps. How odd, I thought; the only hand-written letters I get from the UK are thank-you notes (and I couldn't remember doing anything particularly thankworthy) and wedding invites (and I hadn't seen anyone changing their status to "is engaged" on Facebook). I opened the first envelope while walking to the

Sophie Hardachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02571027538201714160noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3716331321011598936.post-624684408387590632010-09-02T05:58:00.000-07:002010-12-27T07:33:05.220-08:00

The last thing I expected to find in Mestia, a Svan town of about 1,500 people hidden behind the gloomy mountains of the High Caucasus, was a stunning collection of illuminated bibles and manuscripts. Mestia is more widely known for its defensive towers: in the old days, every family in Georgia's Svaneti region had one, due to a long history of blood feuds. The towers still define the Mestia

Sophie Hardachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02571027538201714160noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3716331321011598936.post-62115379297183386862010-08-19T05:27:00.000-07:002010-12-27T07:32:34.688-08:00

"To peace... to Georgia... to our women... to the people who built the paths and huts in this national park." Georgian drinking. We'd heard so much about it - about the infamous 2-litre drinking horns in Svaneti, about travellers forced to gulp down home-brewed booze at gun-point, about road-side "drinking shrines" where Georgians raise a glass to honour the latest casualty of drink

Sophie Hardachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02571027538201714160noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3716331321011598936.post-58533585073159569252010-08-02T07:56:00.000-07:002010-12-27T07:32:13.984-08:00

We're in beautiful Tbilisi, feasting on Georgian wine and watermelons, relaxing on leafy roof terraces and listening to our new friend Kakha's stories about the wild Caucasus. Kakha is also helping us plan our trip to the Borjomi national park and the Svaneti mountains, a particularly wild region even by Caucasian standards, which, as I just said, are already pretty wild. "So what are the

Sophie Hardachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02571027538201714160noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3716331321011598936.post-58662917486436961942010-07-30T00:52:00.000-07:002010-12-27T07:39:20.544-08:00

I'm off to Georgia (Caucasus) for a couple of weeks, but before I enter yet another phase of dodgy Internet connections I thought I'd share my latest findings: 1. You can now pre-order my book on Amazon! (Though I can understand if you'd rather not. It's a bare-bones entry without any cover or blurb, and even if you order now you'll still have to wait until the official release next April.) 2.

Sophie Hardachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02571027538201714160noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3716331321011598936.post-25720254239729907602010-07-15T02:47:00.000-07:002010-12-27T07:31:28.324-08:00

Done. At least for now. Yesterday I sent the final version of the manuscript to my editor, accompanied by a style sheet (got the idea for a style sheet from Kate Mosse's blog - it's a handy way of keeping track of names, places and foreign words, especially in a novel full of Kurds, Turks, Germans and French people). I'm a bit worded out now, so let me just share this wonderful passage by

Sophie Hardachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02571027538201714160noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3716331321011598936.post-84795517734043063352010-07-06T03:18:00.000-07:002010-12-27T07:30:43.319-08:00

At last! Here's the Turkish-Indonesian fusion project you've all been waiting for: a duet by a Turkish musician and Fithrie, a singer from Indonesia's rebellious Aceh province. Visit her site to watch the video: www.myspace.com/fithrie I met Fithrie at the Kurdish Institute, one of my favourite places in Paris - part library, part literary salon, part backpacking lounge. Yesterday, I visited

Sophie Hardachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02571027538201714160noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3716331321011598936.post-70451127707461712922010-06-29T04:15:00.000-07:002010-12-27T07:38:53.570-08:00

Ten years ago, I bought three pirated books. I was a student at the time and, as I told myself, cash-strapped; I also told myself the authors would surely be glad to share their insight with readers who couldn't afford the originals. Well, I've been feeling vaguely guilty every since, especially once I started writing my own books and realised how much work it was. So I was surprised/annoyed/

Sophie Hardachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02571027538201714160noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3716331321011598936.post-54044829597088999392010-06-28T03:02:00.000-07:002010-12-27T07:41:13.019-08:00

Summer has finally arrived in Paris! It's too hot to blog, so I'm just going to post a quick recipe for the wonderfully refreshing cucumber-yoghurt soup we had in Diyarbakir. I made it on Sunday for a picnic dinner in the park (following Sunday morning brunch in the park - hey, it's summer). It worked well as a simple, cooling starter. A note on the politics of soup: our Kurdish friends in

Sophie Hardachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02571027538201714160noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3716331321011598936.post-46891278276475484612010-06-20T04:34:00.000-07:002010-12-27T07:24:32.457-08:00

Isn't this the coldest summer ever? We spent yesterday afternoon listening to Philip Pullman and other writers at the free Shakespeare & Company literary festival, the kind of summery event that should have everyone wearing floral-print dresses or shorts and straw hats, sipping sun-warmed rose*. Well, the florals were there, but they were crushed between layers of thick tights, cardigans,

Sophie Hardachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02571027538201714160noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3716331321011598936.post-58226565831908248402010-06-14T09:20:00.000-07:002010-12-27T07:30:00.055-08:00

Sophie T. and I were sitting on the bus, driving through Hasankeyf, looking at the thousands of caves that perforated the mountains around us. "I think they're man-made. Look, that ceiling is so straight and kind of perpendicular to the walls," perceptive Sophie T. said. "Hm, but I can't imagine anyone digging a cave into that mountain face without high-tech equipment," I said. We talked

Sophie Hardachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02571027538201714160noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3716331321011598936.post-86795266725267449382010-06-06T12:52:00.000-07:002010-12-27T07:29:35.712-08:00

This post is about Farha and Rozan, two women we met on our journey along the Turkish-Syrian border. Farha was baking Kurdish naan bread in this wood-fired oven in the centre of Midyat, slapping the dough on the inner walls of the oven and pulling out the loaves with her bare hands and a frayed piece of cloth. (I think the technique is similar to Indian tandoori-baked naan; I also found this

Sophie Hardachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02571027538201714160noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3716331321011598936.post-54718669279432248742010-06-05T04:53:00.000-07:002010-12-27T07:28:52.458-08:00

The nuns and monks at this monastery, Mor Gabriel, still chant in Aramaic, the language that Jesus spoke. These days, there are just over a dozen of them left; they inhabit the fortress-like monastery together with 25 students, 15 employees, and 12,000 bodies in the crypt. Our guide was a young Syriac Christian who spoke Aramaic, Syriac (a dialect of Aramaic), Arabic and Turkish. The mix of

Sophie Hardachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02571027538201714160noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3716331321011598936.post-4739094895076798562010-05-31T01:27:00.000-07:002010-06-06T14:02:05.912-07:00

Just a quick note to say we are back in Paris after an exhausting but wonderful week of interviews with Kurds, Turks, Arabs, and Assyrian Christians; bumpy rides on minibuses and leisurely walks through ancient cities; little sleep and much talking; and many, many cups of tea.It's been an intense trip because we had so little time - we even skipped Istanbul to concentrate on remote south-eastern

Sophie Hardachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02571027538201714160noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3716331321011598936.post-65650520923242292372010-05-31T00:22:00.000-07:002010-12-27T07:40:45.878-08:00

"Would you like to come to the Turkish-Syrian border with me?" I asked my friend Sophie T. a few weeks ago. "It's very hot and there's not much to see." "Sounds great!" she replied, and a few days later she had booked her flight. That's a proper hack for you. It was only when we arrived here that I realised I had completely undersold the trip. There is lots to see - ancient monasteries,

Sophie Hardachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02571027538201714160noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3716331321011598936.post-30539170627927337572010-05-30T23:21:00.000-07:002010-12-27T07:42:53.210-08:00

Watching the children of Mardin fly their kites in the cool evening breeze over the Turkish-Syrian border made me think of The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. The Mardin version is a bit different - Hosseini's kite-running involves one person holding the string and the other running far ahead with the kite, which works on the wide Afghan plains but would be a bit difficult to practice on a

Sophie Hardachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02571027538201714160noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3716331321011598936.post-90667093339517444962010-05-26T06:23:00.000-07:002010-12-27T09:39:05.701-08:00

Our hotel in Mardin - Erdoba Evleri. Not the most flattering photo of us, especially compared to the stunningly beautiful carved stone arch. View over Syria from the hotel terrace...and travelling companion Sophie T hard at work. This place would be an international honeymoon favourite if only the Syria-Turkey-Iraq intersection had a better reputation.

Sophie Hardachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02571027538201714160noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3716331321011598936.post-35425292024170911062010-05-26T06:10:00.000-07:002010-12-27T07:37:40.351-08:00

Yesterday in Diyarbakır - we had tea in this lovely courtyard, followed by tea by the Tigris, followed by tea in a beautiful old gallery, followed by kebab, beer and dancing. Diyarbakır is mostly described as grim and depressing, but we were lucky to have local friends who showed us some amazing places. My favourite was a row of cushioned wooden platforms by the Tigris: families and groups of

Sophie Hardachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02571027538201714160noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3716331321011598936.post-29549563016612201512010-05-23T06:30:00.000-07:002010-12-27T07:37:19.731-08:00

A few weeks ago, my helpful friend Wendy introduced me to an expert in all things Kurdish. We were sitting outside a bar here in Paris and she told him that I was going to south-eastern Turkey to work on my novel, which features various Kurdish characters. "Sophie's case is a bit unusual in that she's already written the book and is now doing the research," Wendy said. This is almost true.

Sophie Hardachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02571027538201714160noreply@blogger.com4