ARTS AND CULTURE
By Binnur Karaevli RC 84
In August of 2019 I was having a meeting with one of the executive producers of Peaky Blinders in London. He kept on talking about his love of Anatolian Rock. I must admit, I was really embarrassed that I didn’t know much about it. Then I started listening to Anatolian Rock and became obsessed with it. Around the same time, I was listening to Ezhel, Ceza, Saniser and Gaye Su Akyol and was struck by the power of music that connects generations. I was also intrigued by the 70s and the Turkish youth who were silenced by the military coup. Initially I wrote the story as a TV series. Miras (The Inheritance) tells the coming-of-age story of Kerim (17), a troubled teenage musician who attends a posh private school in Istanbul. Kerim’s world takes an unexpected turn when he discovers that his biological grandfather is a legendary Turkish rock musician who has left the rights to all his music to Kerim upon his death.
I love writing about teenagers; my son is 15 years old, so I think I understand their world. During the pandemic when everything shut down, the characters kept haunting me, so I sat down and wrote it as a novel. Soon I discovered how the craft differs from writing a screenplay, which is a visual form of storytelling. The audience will see the story, so you don’t have to worry about certain details and transitions, but a novel is not like that. As I was writing Miras, I was also working in the writers’ room of a new Paramount Plus series called The Turkish Detective with Haluk Bilginer in the lead. I hope the readers will enjoy Miras as much as I’ve enjoyed writing it.
Published July 2022
