The Legend of the Thousand Bulls recounts the 20th-century vicissitudes of a nomad tribe in Turkey, 'remnants from the age of the ancient Hittites'. These anachronistic shepherds and warriors struggle to keep their traditional way of life, while at the same time acquiring land on which to settle and earn a better livelihood. The sly and comparatively sophisticated villagers on the plains are more than a match for them.

There is rather too much technicolour in Yashar Kemal's writing. Horses are 'ruby-eyed', and a man of noble ancestry has 'the eyes of a ravening wolf'. But it is a powerful and touching story of the dwindling tribes whose 'tents, once so proudly upright, seven-poled', have become 'old and tattered with only a pole or two'.

John Mellors, "Dwindling Tribes" (© British Broadcasting Corp. 1976; reprinted by permission of John Mellors), in The Listener, Vol. 96, No. 2466, July 15, 1976, pp. 62-3.∗