THE CASE OF CEM
VERA MUTAFCHIEVA (tr. Angela Rodel)
Sandorf Passage (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$9.99 ebook editions, available now
Rating: 5* of five
Shortlisted for the 2025 Republic of Consciousness Prize—United States & Canada—for Small Presses
The Publisher Says: Vera Mutafchieva’s
The Case of Cem, presented as a series of depositions by historical figures before a court, tells a straightforward tale: Upon the death of Ottoman Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror in 1481, his eldest son Bayezid takes the throne. However, discontented factions within the Ottoman army urge Mehmed’s second son Cem, a well-educated and experienced warrior, to oppose his brother’s ascension. Bayezid refuses, setting off a ruthless power struggle and forcing Cem into long years of exile, a pawn for European powers as they try to slow the Ottoman Empire’s expansion.
This enticing novel of court intrigue maintains lasting resonance for being a personal exploration of emigration and loss as told through the historical era during which the politics of the East and West were sketched out with utter clarity. These early lines of demarcation, as voiced through Christian and Muslim emissaries, power hungry rulers, unflinching warriors, and poets, have indelibly influenced the word as we know it today.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: This Bulgarian historical novel blew my mind: How the HELL has this long, deep, fascinating art object existed for most of my life and I am only now, at *mumblety*-five, hearing about it?! Life is not fair, we all know that, but this gem of writing and thinking remaining unread by Anglophones for most of six decades is a borderline crime against humanity.
Cold Wars, political spats among the too-powerful and too-rich, are to blame for this kind of asininity. Cem's life and times were as transitional as the paradigm shift we're undergoing today. Cem's imagined trial, inspired by a casual remark made by a too-powerful man of that time, is Author Mutafchieva's inspired rendering of History's treatment of the eponymous Cem.
In presenting this case, the first decision Author Mutafchieva had to make was to whom the case was being presented. That decision then dictates where the case is set, how the witnesses are going to present their evidence, all the trappings of a court case. The witnesses are all dead; they address us directly from the afterlife, with their direct knowledge of events and, somehow, of the events that have transpired since their own deaths.
The dreaded second-person narration, the eternal chest-pokey "you," is thus inevitably the main choice the author makes. It was that choice which left this novel unread on my Kindle for months. I will say that this narrative choice was...not my favorite. I was not as irked as I would ordinarily be, however, because the framing device explains the necessity of its use...we're reading depositions from witnesses in a court case.
In the course of reading about the case of Cem, a picture of him emerges. The idea that this dreamy, loving, insufficiently ruthless man could rule an empire is laughable...and the empire would've been all the better for his reign. He would've been a humane leader, and we all know what happens to those honorable souls (ask the late US President Jimmy Carter). Therein, of course, the need for a "case" to be made...a decision rendered in the court of History, which is naturally enough made up of thee and me as History's heirs, successors, and assigns.
What we do not get is anything from Cem himself. He is acted upon, never an actor, as his life from birth as his father's favorite child, born of a christian wife (sin of sins!), is always defined by the loves, hates, and needs of others. His proposal made to his elder half-brother to divide the immensity of the Ottoman Empire was, I think, actually very sound; of course that idea was never going to fly in a world of winner-takes-all and us-v-them thinking. It wouldn't fly today in, say Ukraine for the sake of argument, for those same reasons.
What made this tale of
Realpolitik in translation from the Bulgarian a five-star read is the way each deposition/chapter adds another layer of words and thereby ideas over the space that is Cem's. The heart of the book, the sine qua non of the story, the gravity so powerful it lenses the entire Ottoman Empire, and Europe its enemy, from each and every direction the light emitted by all the actors and each reporter of the action thus illuminated occupies. The layers thus accreted form a strange shape. There is no motion from under these layers; Cem is absent and thus volitionless.
How that reality can create an animated image is, frankly, alchemical. It's like the celluloid of the stories told about Cem pass through an undetectable development bath that causes the shadows of him we're seeing to move as different reporters shine light through that celluloid. We're seeing a movie, a
polyphonic miniseries, an opera with a huge cast whose parts were written by different composers...all in the same key and tempo.
It should feel shaggy and have holes everywhere; it should be a sieve not a bowl. It is instead a cauldron with rippling waters from many sources and the light from many points combines to cast an unquiet image, now sharp now wavy, interference become more than a pattern.
I applaud the author, long dead (1929-2009), for doing the immense work of researching then reimagining that data. The result is, based on Rodel's work translating it, a masterwork of polyphony. Often when reading historical fiction, there comes a moment of storytelling that is inauthentic. It's an anachronism, or it's not part of the historical record. It *feels* wrong, or at least not right.
I never found that moment reading this story. It earns all five stars from me.
