Press
Interviews
BOMB Magazine | Bloodletting: Mina Seçkin Interviewed by Mina Hamedi
Mina Seçkin and Alicia Kroell in Conversation | Don’t Write Alone
Electric Literature | A Turkish American Novel About A Melancholic Young Woman in Istanbul
The PEN Ten | An Interview with Mina Seçkin
Shondaland | Mina Seçkin’s Dynamic Debut Novel, ‘The Four Humors’
SKYLIT | Mina Seckin, ”FOUR HUMORS” w/ Hilary Leichter
Debutiful | Community, Roadblocks, and Identity
Lithub | Mina Seçkin on Ferrante, Nabokov, and The Phantom Tollbooth
Platform Magazine with Nidhi Verma
Chicago Review of Books | The God of Small Things with Mina Seçkin
Debut Spotlight | Mina Seçkin: The Four Humors
Columbia Journal of Literary Criticism | Unmaking the Family Secret: An Interview with Mina Seçkin
Hayat Life | Mina Seçkin Debuts First Novel
Reviews
“[A] humane and refreshingly astringent novel.” —Lauren LeBlanc, The New York Times Book Review
“An engrossing exploration of national identity, the meaning of family and loss, and what happens when a family hides its central secret . . . Read The Four Humors for an insider’s travelogue of Istanbul and its volatile modern political history, and for the tastes and feel of contemporary Turkish culture. Read it too, to get to know a wonderful set of characters—women in all their flaws and generosities—and for an astute account of what it means to be an immigrant in America. Finally, read it to follow one young woman’s beautifully-rendered journey into her past, so that she can wrest herself from stasis and step into her future.” —Martha Ann Toll, NPR
“If stories expand us, secrets shrink us, as this deep, wise, and intricate debut novel by Mina Seçkin illustrates.” —Jeffrey Ann Goudie, The Boston Globe
“A deliciously bittersweet meditation on the elastic, shifting narratives we weave from the fragile threads of our daily existence, the people around us, and the places we call home . . . What holds these unraveling characters together is Seçkin’s precise, direct prose, which balances the grotesque with the beautiful, the funny with the genuinely moving. With lyricism and blunt, humorous honesty, Seçkin pokes and prods at the complexities of family history and personal identity from different angles.” —Malena Steelberg, Los Angeles Review of Books
“Fans of Elif Batuman’s The Idiot should take note of Mina Seçkin’s debut The Four Humors, another wry and intelligent novel that engages with the Turkish diaspora in America. As twenty-year-old Sibel seeks relief from an unshakable headache, she ends up delving into her family history and dubious medicinal theories, all of which Seçkin captures with a mordant wisdom that belies her own young age.” —Chicago Review of Books
“Like the Russian soap operas that Sibel and her grandmother watch devotedly, The Four Humors unfolds at a leisurely pace, with an extensive cast of characters and a multigenerational plot . . . You’ll find yourself hooked.” —Thane Tierney, BookPage
“Seçkin’s lively prose and empathic portrayal of her characters make for an evocative and entertaining first novel.” —Booklist
“[A] perceptive debut . . . Seçkin moves with poise from Sibel’s modern-day, deadpan tone to the stories of her older relatives, which are related as stand-alone narratives and are often entangled with Turkey’s tempestuous political history . . . A moving family story.” —Publishers Weekly
“A convincing, often dryly humorous sense of life in a constantly changing city . . . A captivating treat.” —Kirkus Reviews
“At turns playful and serious … One of the pleasures of The Four Humors is encountering a multifaceted and complex culture which will be unfamiliar to most Americans, for whom Turkey has been viewed through the limited prism of the Cold War or post 9/11 military adventurism.” —Charles Holdefer, Full Stop