“Certain wondrous minds can set their existence to a majestic soundtrack and discern the magical in even the most ordinary of days. Esmeralda Santiago is one such creature. In the end she’s also telling us the story of how sometimes we’re fighting for our lives, even when we don’t know it.

― Los Angeles Times

What Esmeralda says about The Turkish Lover

“I gave the world a shadow of me…a me who looked like me but wasn’t. I reserved the real Esmeralda in a quiet, secret place no one could reach. I kept that me so hidden I was invisible even to myself.” Santiago’s travel companion in the search for herself is Ulvi, the lover in the title, the man introduced at the conclusion of her 1998 memoir, Almost a Woman. Near her journey’s end with the Turk, she realizes that their relationship is “a web of matched neuroses and it was up to me to untangle them if I ever wanted to be free.” Readers are fortunate that Esmeralda chose to bring herself out from the shadows.