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Alexander Christie-Miller
ALEXANDER CHRISTIE-MILLER  is a writer and journalist based in Istanbul. His writing about Turkish politics and culture has been published in Newsweek, the Times, the Atlantic, and other publications. He is a regular contributor to The White Review.


Articles Available Online


Ada Kaleh

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Issue No. 17

Alexander Christie-Miller

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Issue No. 17

When King Carol II of Romania set foot on the tiny Danubian island of Ada Kaleh on 4 May 1931, it was said among...

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October 2015

War is Easy, Peace is Hard

Alexander Christie-Miller

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October 2015

At around midday on 19 July, Koray Türkay boarded a bus in Istanbul and set off for the Syrian...

            Zut, zut, zut, zut             – Marcel Proust, A la recherche du temps perdu   Sostène Zanzibar was not feeling himself that day; someone else was A journalist from an English paper Name of Phyllidia Or possibly Petronella Something along those lines The interview had gone remarkably well Such probing questions Very stimulating, very in-depth There was no denying that Sienna – or possibly Serena – was thoroughly a young woman Hang on, cross that out Was a thorough young woman Very thorough indeed   In a bid to impress her host, she had taken up gesticulation with all the fervour of a new convert It was a joy to behold Her impeccably-manicured hands would suddenly flutter away from the warmth of her lap, describing graceful ellipses as if trying to conjure up words that could not possibly exist Ever In any language Even French   When the ink ran out of her biro, Zanzibar produced a pencil from his inside pocket with a little flourish ‘Men,’ he said, ‘alwez ave two penceuls’ He almost winked, but thought better of it ‘Women,’ she said a little later, sitting on his face, wearing nothing but her high-heeled boots, ‘always have two pairs of lips’ She almost added Try these on for size, big boy, but thought better of it too   Allegra – or possibly Anushka – had struggled to fully comprehend the answers to some (if not most) of her questions The fact that the former usually bore little (if any) relation to the latter did not help Neither did Zanzibar’s scattergun delivery nor his baffling habit of peppering his sentences with arcane references to Heidegger and Blanchot Whenever he switched to pigeon English, he sounded like Jacques Derrida dubbed by Inspector Clouseau, which proved an even greater source of confusion Of course, now that she was grinding her crotch against his salient features, that his nose kept popping in and out of her prize orifices, Zanzibar’s discourse was largely inaudible anyway This was as it should be She wanted to move beyond surface meaning, to experience his words at

Contributor

August 2014

Alexander Christie-Miller

Contributor

August 2014

ALEXANDER CHRISTIE-MILLER  is a writer and journalist based in Istanbul. His writing about Turkish politics and culture has been...

Forgotten Sea

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Issue No. 11

Alexander Christie-Miller

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Issue No. 11

I. As I stood on the flanks of the Kaçkar Mountains where they slope into the Black Sea near the town of Arhavi, the...
Occupy Gezi: From the Fringes to the Centre, and Back Again

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July 2013

Alexander Christie-Miller

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July 2013

Taksim Square appears at first a wide, featureless and unlovely place. It is a ganglion of roads and bus routes, a destination and a...

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Interview

November 2011

Interview with Margaret Jull Costa

Sam Gordon

Interview

November 2011

On first impressions, this interview with Margaret Jull Costa, happening as it did – for the most part –...

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October 2015

The Bird Thing

Julianne Pachico

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October 2015

You are worried about the bird thing but that’s the last thing you want to think about right now,...

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July 2015

Talk Into My Bullet Hole

Rose McLaren

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July 2015

‘Someday people are going to read about you in a story or a poem. Will you describe yourself for...

 

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