Abstract
“The Age of Strongmen” is the opening excerpt of a novel in progress. The excerpt covers the opening four chapters and follows the parallel stories of two characters: Jules, the child of a poor woman and a delinquent father; and Sunra, the Turkish refugee turned circus strongman, in Atlanta and the American South at the turn of the twentieth century. The novel follows Jules as he runs away from home. Similarly, it also follows Sunra’s escape from certain poverty in Istanbul after a short career as a street performer propels him into joining a troupe of travelling strongmen, an enterprise that first leads him to fame and prestige in Europe, through demise of the troupe after arriving in America, to his final rebirth as a great circus performer, the greatness of which is ultimately illuminated by the profound relationship he develops with Jules, the burgeoning understudy who together with Sunra experiences his first truly paternal relationship. Jules has a grand capacity for imagination, and the boy’s fantastical imagination colors his narrative with fantastical realities that may or may not exist in the magical story book world of a young boy’s imagination where dreams and realities melt together. In this lens, the world becomes the circus in which the narrative finally lands and in which both characters live and flourish.
The text that will comprise this thesis will be made up of the opening four chapters of this story. These chapters will tell the following tales: Jules’s first encounter with Sunra during a childhood outing with his estranged father; Jules’s brief relationship with a neighborhood friend which ends abruptly after a racial incident in Atlanta, and after which Jules runs away from home; The boyhood of Sunra in Istanbul, the tale of his street performing and his running off with the troupe of strongmen; and the travels of Jules through the wilderness and as a stowaway on trains in pursuit of the circus. This builds the first section of the novel which takes Jules from his first experience with Sunra until the point that they actually meet.
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