Turkish · Intermediate
Read Kaşağı ve Diğer Hikâyeler in Turkishwith every sentence explained
English title: Kaşağı (The Currycomb) and Other Stories
Ömer Seyfettin · 1917
Free to start · iPhone, iPad & Mac
About the book
Kaşağı ve Diğer Hikâyeler by Ömer Seyfettin was first published in 1917. In Passage you read the full text in the original Turkish, marked intermediate and filed under children, historical fiction and young adult. It runs to about 17,900 words.
A broken currycomb. A small lie. A memory that never fades.
Ömer Seyfettin takes us back to childhood: stables and village schools, sleepy country towns and the folk tales grandmothers tell. In Kaşağı, a little boy who adores the horses of his father's old groom Dadaruh breaks a precious currycomb, and lets his younger brother Hasan take the blame. In Falaka, forty children live in fear of their old teacher and the dreaded falaka hanging by his desk, until one boy dreams up a prank. In Perili Köşk, a no-nonsense father of a big family sets his heart on a gleaming white mansion that the whole neighbourhood swears is haunted.
Funny, tender and sometimes heartbreaking, these stories are staples of Turkish school readers, written by one of the founders of the modern Turkish short story. Short and lively, they make a perfect first step into classic Turkish literature.
- Author
- Ömer Seyfettin
- First published
- 1917
- Language
- Turkish
- Level
- Intermediate
- Genre
- Children, Historical Fiction, Young Adult
- Length
- About 17,900 words
How it opens
Ahırın avlusunda oynarken aşağıda, gümüş söğütler altında görünmeyen derenin hazin şırıltısını işitirdik. Evimiz iç çitin büyük kestane ağaçları arkasında kaybolmuş gibiydi. Annem, İstanbul'a gittiği için benden bir yaş küçük olan kardeşim Hasan'la artık Dadaruh'un yanından hiç ayrılmıyorduk. Bu, babamın seyisi, ihtiyar bir adamdı. Sabahleyin erkenden ahıra koşuyorduk. En sevdiğimiz şey atlardı. Dadaruh'la beraber onları suya götürmek, çıplak sırtlarına binmek, ne doyulmaz bir zevkti. Hasan korkar, yalnız binemezdi. Dadaruh onu kendi önüne alırdı. Torbalara arpa koymak, yemliklere ot doldurmak, gübreleri kaldırmak eğlenceli bir oyundan ziyade, bizim hoşumuza gidiyordu. Hele tımar... Bu en zevkli şeydi. Dadaruh eline kaşağıyı alıp işe başladı mı, tıpkı... tık... tık... tık... tıpkı bir saat gibi... yerimde duramaz:
Reading Kaşağı ve Diğer Hikâyeler in Passage
Passage sets the book as a quiet, paginated reader in Turkish. Read at your own pace, and when a sentence stops you, tap it. You get:
- a natural translation of that exact sentence,
- a short note on the grammar, in plain words,
- the key words, which you can save with the sentence they came from,
- all of it in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Turkish or Portuguese, whichever you read best.
It's marked intermediate: comfortable once everyday Turkish feels familiar, with the harder sentences one tap away. The words you save come back later in short review games, so the book keeps teaching after you close it.
