Maureen Freely

Maureen Freely (born 1952) is an American journalist, novelist, professor, and translator. She has worked on the Warwick Writing Programme since 1996.

Born in Neptune, New Jersey, Freely grew up in Turkey and now lives in England, where she lectures at the University of Warwick and is an occasional contributor to The Guardian and The Independent newspapers. She is the current president of English PEN, the founding centre of PEN International.

Among her novels is The Life of the Party, set in Turkey. She has also written The Other Rebecca, a contemporary version of Daphne du Maurier's classic 1938 novel Rebecca. Freely is also an occasional contributor to Cornucopia; a magazine about Turkey.

She is best known as the Turkish-into-English translator of Orhan Pamuk's recent novels. She works closely with Pamuk on these translations, because they often serve as the basis when his work is translated into other languages. They were both educated simultaneously at Robert College in Istanbul, although they did not know each other at the time.

Freely translated and wrote an introduction to Fethiye Çetin's memoir, My Grandmother.

She is the daughter of author John Freely, and has a brother, Brendan. Maureen Freely is the mother of four children and two step children.

Freely is an atheist.

Novels

• Sailing Through Byzantium (2013)
• Enlightenment (2008)
• The Other Rebecca (2000)
• Mother's Helper (1982)
• The Stork Club (1995)
• What About Us (1996)
• The Parent Trap (2002)
• Under the Vulcania (1994)
• The Life of the Party (1986)

Translations

of Orhan Pamuk:

• The Black Book
• Snow
• Other Colors: Essays and a story
• Istanbul: Memories and the City
• The Museum of Innocence

of Fethiye Çetin

• My Grandmother

of Sabahattin Ali

• Madonna in a Fur Coat (with Alexander Dawe)

of Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar

• The Time Regulation Institute

of Sait Faik Abasıyanık

• A Useless Man

• Sabahattin Ali’s Madonna in a Fur Coat – the surprise Turkish bestseller, The Guardian. Retrieved 12 June 2016.
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