A great epic novel or a pilaf Western? : They Burn the Thistles

Continuing on with yesterday's post, I think the real analogue for Yashar Kemal's "They Burn the Thistles" may be Louis L'Amour - it's like a pilaf Western but set in remote Turkey (probably a section of Turkey near Armenia and/or Kurdistan? despite his obsession with including obscure village names, he does little to make the location clear to non-Turkish readers, intentionally?), novel also appears to be set in about the 1920s (the villagers ride horses, if they're lucky, but there are a references to "motor cars," which we never see). So, no, Kemal, writing in 1969, is not a chronicler of modern-day Turkey, as Pahmet (sp?) is today, and was probably looked on by the intelligentsia as a bit of a hack, as someone who made Turkey look backwards and exotic to non-Turkish readers - so I would not hold him up as an example of great Turkish or European writing, but the book is pretty entertaining and does capture a bit of a vanished world: Slim Memed, 100 pages in, is still in hiding, and the his ancient uncle Osman is dying to tell people that Slim is back (like the arrival of a superhero), he keeps silent; meanwhile, the evil landowner and general tyrant and bully, Ali Safa Bey, attacks villagers at night, but old Osman fights back, shooting one of the Bey's soldiers in ambush. The battle is looming, but Memed the Hawk has not stepped out of hiding - it has the makings of a great epic battle, fought among the poor and the remote.