cover image Looking for Osman

Looking for Osman

Eric Lawlor. Vintage Books USA, $13 (213pp) ISBN 978-0-679-73822-0

Determined to follow the trails of other famous writer-explorers--including Herman Melville, Eliot Warburton and Joseph Brodsky--Lawlor ( In Bolivia ) is at once clever and sensitive as he guides the reader through modern Turkey. Embarking alone from Istanbul, where mosques and McDonald's dwell in uneasy proximity, he depicts Turkey, long the embattled crossroads of Moslem and Christian civilizations, as a nation of many cultures forced together in a struggle to reconcile a stubborn past with an impatient future. Lawlor makes this dichotomy clear through his quest for the title character, Osman. A rogue con man of popular ancient legend whose actual existence may itself be a ruse, Osman is, by his very nature, elusive to westerners because he, in the words of the author's Turkish friend, `` . . . belongs to a past the country would like to forget.'' Lawlor possesses the skill to describe the exotic without need to draw western parallels to establish context with his readers. Additionally, in a type of book where the author is nominally the star, he appears comfortable in allowing his subject to dominate the work. (Mar.)