Red Star over the Black Sea

Nâz?m Hikmet (1902-1963) is best known as a poet and communist whose daring flight by motorboat from Turkey to the Eastern Bloc captured international headlines in 1951. One of the most important poets to have written in the Turkish language, Nâz?m Hikmet's dramatic life story is fascinating in its own right, but also intersects with the story of the broader twentieth century.

James H. Meyer situates Nâz?m Hikmet within the broader context of Turkish communist "border-crossers", individuals whose lives would go on to be shaped significantly by their ability, inability, or need to traverse the frontier. Born at the turn of the twentieth century and coming of age in the early 1920s, the women and men from Nâz?m Hikmet's generation were the last of the Ottomans. Children of empire, they had grown up in an era of porous frontiers, but by the time they reached their third decade, these borders had begun to close.

Drawing upon an enormous amount of previously untapped archival materials and personal papers from Moscow, Istanbul, Amsterdam, and Washington, DC, Meyer has written a biography of Nâz?m Hikmet unlike any other. A book of world history wrapped inside a life story, Red Star over the Black Sea shows how changing attitudes toward borders and the people who cross them impacted a late imperial generation all the way up to the final years of the Cold War.

James H. Meyer has written a beautiful book...Thoroughly grounded in multi-country archival research, this book reevaluates the impact of Hikmet and his comrades and offers a fresh approach to writing a transnational history... intelligent and expertly crafted.

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