The Secrets of Eternal Happiness

The preface states the book's worldview plainly: everything a person does has been written in advance by God, and 'however clever a man may be, he can never step outside his destiny'. It is an unseen power that pushes fledglings back into the nest and makes a sleeping baby suddenly cry. The author says every topic, quotation and poem in the book rests on the Qur'an and hadith, 'yet this is not a religious book' — the book's central contradiction, since most of the later chapters are precisely religious preaching.

The strongest part of the book is the autobiography. Born in 1947 in the village of Ayvadere near Araklı, Trabzon, the son of a devout carpenter with seven children, the author recalls that his father wanted him to become a hafiz (someone who memorizes the Qur'an), but a friend's father persuaded him to enrol his son in school. One of the most sincere lines concerns his sisters, who never went to school: 'I still carry that guilt inside me.' When his father fell ill, the family moved in 1960 to Terme near Samsun; the 13-year-old boy worked as a street vendor, was married off at 17 under family pressure, and had two children before his military service.

1980–1993 was the author's 'peak': an advertising firm, luxury homes, cars, trips to Europe, acquaintances in business, politics, the arts and sport. But he lists the price of that life in six points, and this list is the most useful page in the book: no time for family, constant financial strain, a relentless race with competitors, untrustworthy relationships built on self-interest, wasteful spending for show, and drifting away from religious duties. His observation that his wealthy, older acquaintances 'went around with pills in their pockets' is also striking.

When he went bankrupt in the 1994 economic crisis, 'false friends' and some relatives disappeared, and he suffered insomnia and depression. The turning point was a phone call one Ramadan night from an old friend, Turhan: that very night he performed his ablutions, went to the mosque and resumed the five daily prayers. When his television broke, he began reading an eight-volume Turkish translation and commentary of the Qur'an that had sat unopened on his shelves for years, and writes that all his psychological troubles 'healed by themselves in a short time' — he even quit smoking. The testimony is sincere, but readers should bear in mind that depression does not lift this way for everyone and may require professional help.

From here the book shifts from memoir to exhortation: each chapter opens with a few verses or hadiths and continues with commentary, the author's simple rhymed poems and short anecdotes. The language is sincere but repetitive, and the editing is weak. The book should be read as a personal act of 'preaching' born of the author's own experience; readers looking for a universal answer to the 'secrets of happiness' will find only one worldview here.

• A sincere life story told in the first person
• Qur'an, hadith and commentary quotations in every chapter
• The author's simple rhymed poems ('A Life in a Few Lines', 'The Gathering' and others)