Imagining 'The Turk' * Edited by BO IDAR JEZERNIK

Abstract

This book will not do much for the reputation of Cambridge Scholars, a recently established academic publishing house that has a ‘do-it-yourself’ approach to editorial management. It is not that the fourteen articles that make up the book are without merit. All of them appear to be based on original research and have something interesting to say. The essential weakness of the volume is that (apart from the blurb on the back of the dust jacket) it is totally devoid of all the kinds of editorial apparatus that would serve to give it cohesion or to explain its raison d’être: there is no foreword, no introduction, and no information about the contributors. We are not told anything about how this collection of articles is seen to relate to the not inconsiderable literature that already exists on Turkish imagology. Other ways in which the book falls short of the standards expected from a reputable publisher are (i) the failure to provide proper source references or dates for many of the illustrations (e.g. pp. 6, 13, 14, 51, 52, 58, 59, 69, 71, 170, 171), and (ii) the poor standard of English expression in many of the articles, which in places seriously impedes the clarity of the argument.