Apartment Narratives in Nazlı Eray's Children's Novels

After the child's own body and home, the child's spatial imagination is established and deepened through books. In this context, children's literature becomes an important data source for spatial research/discussions. With literary texts, space is reconstructed between the reader and the narrator. The narrator's space can sometimes express a non-existent or non-existent period or moment with reference to his/her own living spaces and memories, and allows the reader to reconstruct a space that he/she may not have witnessed with his/her mental accumulation. In this context, Nazlı Eray, who also produces works in children's literature, reconstructs the places of childhood, where she states that she gained important experiences in her own life, in the minds of children with her surrealistic narration. While the real places and social life of 1960s Istanbul are reconstructed in the minds of the readers, historical personalities and fictional characters are presented together with the heroes of the novel. The Istanbul of this period, especially in works such as ‘The Mystery of Frej Apartment’, ‘Enchanted Beyoğlu’, ‘Mırmır Osman’, ‘Night Blossom Istanbul’ and ‘Billur Octopus and Purple Pearl’, is handled with detailed descriptions and the atmosphere of the city is enriched in a literary context. For this reason, these books of the author constitute the universe of the study. Beyoğlu, where the author spent his childhood, and the apartments are the common places of the works. With the content analysis method, the forms, meanings and architectural features (mass tectonics, façade characters, interior features) of apartment buildings, which are examples of civil architecture, are analysed.