Time to Talk About John Grisham: How Did I Meet Him?

(Metonymy is applied, so don’t get too excited)

Source: Academy of Achievement

I was 14 years old.

It was my first year of high school, and I was in a German language preparatory class.

For an entire year, we focused solely on learning German.

At school, we had continuous German lessons from both Turkish and German teachers.

Vocabulary memorization, tons of assignments, readings, writings…

Looking back now, I think it was such a sweet, enjoyable, and even wonderful year.

It was a whole two terms dedicated to learning just one language.

You didn’t have to think about anything else or experience the stress of other subjects.

By the second term of that beautiful year, which I didn’t appreciate as much then, I had started to read, write, and understand German quite well.

The level books were no longer satisfying.

I decided to take a small but somewhat courageous step and read a thick novel in German.

Yes, yes, I know, it’s a tiny little decision and doesn’t really require much courage.

However, it was not recommended back then.

They said it might scare us, make us lose interest in the language, cause alienation, or lead to despair, etc.

One day after school, I went to the Beyazıt (pretty popular in Istanbul -Turkey) second-hand bookstores.

In the two shops I visited, there were no German novels. In the third shop, there were a few old — no, not just old, but quite ancient — books. None of them caught my attention. I think it was in the fifth or sixth shop where I found what I was looking for.

Why is this moment important to me, and what am I trying to convey? Is it because I encountered my first German book and read such wonderful novels? No, no.

This moment was when I first met one of my favorite authors, whom I later became an avid fan of and have read repeatedly in every language I came across (not the same book, but he has many books in that regard). By “met the author,” I mean “met his writing.” What’s the literary term for this art? (Metonymy maybe?)

John Grisham.

The original English title is A Time to Kill. The German translation I saw on the shelf was Die Jury.

It’s not a direct translation. Good thing it’s not. If I had seen the German equivalent of A Time to Kill, I might have thought it was a thriller or a crimi and not picked it up.

The word “Jury” with its legal context intrigued me.

Source: Cinema.de

I took it in my hand and read the back: A black father who killed two white men who raped his little daughter and a determined lawyer who took on this father’s criminal case.

Wow, wow, wow…

I don’t remember how much I paid for it. But if the second-hand bookseller had known how much I liked it, he probably would have thought it was sold too cheaply. Because I would have given all my pocket money for it.

Did I understand the summary on the back cover right away?

To a large extent. I just didn’t know the word “rape” in German at the time. Phones weren’t smart back then, so we couldn’t just look up words in a dictionary instantly.

But I figured out the meaning from the context.

I went home.

That evening, I started reading.

There were words I didn’t know. If I felt like I couldn’t understand a page without those words, I would check them.

But the book was so exciting and gripping that I skipped over a lot of it. I understood the overall story, guessed, etc.

Even being able to read this after just having read level books the day before felt really good.

From this, we can see how motivating it is when selected books in a foreign language are engaging, fluent in their narration, and the story draws you in.

The next day, I took the book to school.

Source: Alamy

I tried to read it during breaks. I couldn’t put it down.

Some of my friends praised it, while others wrinkled their noses, thinking that I was bragging about my German skills with a book as thick as a brick.

The cover of the book was a bit damaged. So, to prevent it from being obvious that it was in German and to keep it from falling apart, I covered it with a baby blue notebook cover decorated with Tweety birds.

I think it was also the first novel I read that dealt directly with courtroom settings.

I finished it in about a week or maybe ten days.

Given my language level at the time and the thickness of the book, that was quite fast.

Of course, I was immediately saddened when it ended. I started looking into other books by the author.

Source: IMDb

First, I found The Firm in Turkish in the high school library. It was fantastic too.

Then I started researching the author.

I discovered that the author I thought I had discovered and claimed for myself was already world-famous.

Some of his books had been adapted into films. I was astonished to find that I had first encountered this author with his debut novel. Remarkably, the second book I read was actually his second book.

For those encountering this for the first time, let me give a quick overview:

John Grisham, who was a lawyer by profession, took his book A Time to Kill to 28 publishers without success. Eventually, a small publisher accepted it, but the book didn’t sell well. However, he didn’t give up and wrote a second book. This book was accepted more easily, and two years after its publication, Paramount Pictures adapted it into a screenplay, starring Tom Cruise.

It turns out that my beloved author has 48 books, 10 of which have been adapted into films. As you can imagine, he is extremely wealthy.

Source: Google Play

Since I was 14, I’ve continued to read his books and watch his films whenever I can. However, with university, academic career, and professional life taking over, I haven’t been able to read or watch as frequently, and I haven’t managed to finish my list of books and films.

But I’ve become so attached that anyone in my family or among my friends who encounters a book or film by the author will surely think of me. I’m glad I discovered him.

This is how I came to know him. I plan to write another article about why I love his writing and books.