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Urbanisation, migration and \\u2018folk language\\u2019 are explored in the 1984 novel by Latife Tekin. The story is a carnivalesque fusion of contrasts like its title \\u2013 where \\u2018Berji\\u2019 conjures images of an innocent shepherdess and \\u2018Kristin\\u2019 of a sex worker. There\\u2019s blind old G\\xfcll\\xfc Baba, rumoured to cure the ills caused by a nearby factory\\u2019s chemical wastewater. There\\u2019s Fidan of Many Skills, rumoured to know all the \\u2018arts of the bed\\u2019. There\\u2019s the rumour of roads, jobs, and clean water coming to Flower Hill: they never materialise. In his foreword to Berji Kristin: Tales from the Garbage Hills, John Berger crowns \\u2018rumour\\u2019 its ultimate storyteller. New Generation Thinker Sarah Jilani looks at the way the inhabitants of Flower Hill make sense of their disorienting transition from village life to shantytown in the story from one of Turkey's most influential female authors writing today.

Producer: Torquil MacLeod