Mother Land
By Dmetri Kakmi
Eland £16.99, 288 pages
FT Bookshop price £13.59

Identity is the main theme running through this partially fictionalised memoir. Kakmi grew up on the Aegean island of Bozcaada, officially part of Turkey, but with a long history of Greek influence.

The author feels similarly torn between cultures, and conflict pervades the book – both in the tensions between Turks and Greeks, and in the tempestuous marriage of the writer’s parents.

Unfortunately, such doubts about identity extend to the book itself. Kakmi admits he altered the chronology, changed the names of some participants, and, on occasion, even merged two characters into one.

This may be more honest than many memoirists, but it damages his book’s credibility: which characters are real and which are composites?

His eventual conclusion – that he is both Turkish and Greek – is explicit long before the end, which makes for an anticlimactic denouement. Kakmi’s prose compensates, however – his writing is both evocative and poetic, but never pretentious.