The Traveler by Sadik Yalsizucanlar: book review

I bought The Traveler (2010) by Turkish writer, Sadik Yalsizucanlar at the airport in Istanbul.

The Traveler is known only as The Traveler, a man with no name, who meets and often lives with people on his journey from Spain to Mecca. He falls in love with Harmony, a woman of intense beauty, who shatters his notion that “love is the existence of a lover.” He also meets a man he names Abdullah who accompanies him to Granada in Spain. On his travels, he also writes. He is a poet and author, and as he wrote the last chapter of one of his books in Cordoba, Spain, a pen, called The Quill, speaks to him, providing divine inspiration.

The Traveler is actually the story of the well-known sufi thinker and poet Muhammad (Muhiyiddin) Ibn ‘Arabi, described as the Leonardo da Vinci of the East, who lived during the Middle Ages in Andalusian Spain, but also the story of universal humanity and the universal traveler.

The style is meditative and serene, simple and spiritual, reflecting the spiritual journey of universal man.

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