Tales from the Expat Harem by Anastasia M Ashman and Jennifer Eaton Gökmen
My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk
Istanbul Noir by Mustafa Ziyalan
Historical novel set around ENGLAND (Birmingham)
Ten Great Books set in TURKEY
23rd January 2026
Ten great books set in Turkey. Turkey (officially Türkiye) is a transcontinental nation uniquely bridging Europe and Asia across the strategic Bosphorus Strait. Bordered by eight countries and three seas, it serves as a historic crossroads of civilizations.
Its largest city, Istanbul, famously straddles two continents, while the capital, Ankara, sits in the heart of the Anatolian plateau. Established as a secular republic in 1923 by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the country blends ancient Ottoman and Byzantine heritage with modern Western influences. Known for its world-renowned cuisine, warm hospitality, and diverse landscapes – from the fairy chimneys of Cappadocia to the turquoise Mediterranean coast – Türkiye remains a top global destination for history, culture, and commerce.
Here are ten of our favourite books set in the country.
Tales from the Expat Harem by Anastasia M Ashman and Jennifer Eaton Gökmen
This is a timely anthology on being female expats in a Muslim country – and how the Turkish landscape, psyche, people, and customs have transformed their lives. As the Western world struggles to comprehend the paradoxes of modern Turkey, a country both European and Asian, forward-looking yet rooted in ancient empire, “Tales from the Expat Harem” reveals its most personal nuances.
This illuminating anthology provides a window into the country from the perspective of thirty-two expatriates from seven different nations – artists, entrepreneurs, Peace Corps volunteers, archaeologists, missionaries, and others – who established lives in Turkey for work, love, or adventure.
Poignant, humorous, and transcendent, the essays take readers to weddings and workplaces, down cobbled Byzantine streets, into boisterous bazaars along the Silk Road, and deep into the feminine stronghold of steamy Ottoman bathhouses. The outcome is a stunning collection of voices from women suspended between two homes as they redefine their identities and reshape their worldviews.
My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk
In the late 16th century, during the final years of the reign of Ottoman Sultan Murat III, a great work is commissioned, a book celebrating the Sultan’s life. The work is conducted in secret, to the ignorance of the artists involved, for fear of a violent religious reaction to the European style of the illuminations in the book.
An artist goes missing, feared dead, and Black, a painter who has been in a self-enforced exile because of spurned love, returns to help his former Master investigate the disappearance.
Istanbul Noir by Mustafa Ziyalan
A city at once ancient and modern, Istanbul is the quintessential postcard-perfect metropolis.
But the alluring vistas can be deceiving, for beneath this veneer as a meeting place of cultures, religions and ethnicities lies a heart of cold-blooded darkness, seething with desire, boiling with vengeance and burning with frustration.
10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World by Elif Shafak
‘Haunting, moving, beautifully written – and based by an extraordinary cast of characters who capture the diversity of modern Turkey. A masterpiece’ Peter Frankopan
‘In the first minute following her death, Tequila Leila’s consciousness began to ebb, slowly and steadily, like a tide receding from the shore. Her brain cells, having run out of blood, were now completely deprived of oxygen. But they did not shut down. Not right away…’
For Leila, each minute after her death brings a sensuous memory: the taste of spiced goat stew, sacrificed by her father to celebrate the long-awaited birth of a son; the sight of bubbling vats of lemon and sugar which the women use to wax their legs while the men attend mosque; the scent of cardamom coffee that Leila shares with a handsome student in the brothel where she works. Each memory, too, recalls the friends she made at each key moment in her life – friends who are now desperately trying to find her. . .
The Drowning Guard by Linda Lafferty
Each morning in the hour before dawn, a silent boat launches on the Bosphorous, moving swiftly into the deepest part of the waters halfway between Europe and Asia, where a man will die…
The Drowning Guard is the tale of the Ottoman princess, Esma Sultan—one of the most powerful women in Ottoman history and unlike any other woman in the Islamic world. In a gender reversal of Scheherazade in 1001 Arabian Nights, Esma seduces a different Christian lover each night, only to have him drowned in the morning. The Sultaness’s true passion burns only for the Christian-born soldier charged with carrying out the brutal nightly death sentence: her drowning guard, Ivan Postivich.
The Drowning Guard explores the riddle of Esma—who is at once a murderer and a champion and liberator of women—and the man who loves her in spite of her horrifying crimes. This textured historical novel, set in the opulence and squalor of Istanbul in 1826, is woven with the complexity and consequences of love.
Body Count by Barbara Nadel
Any bloody death will lead Inspectors Çetin Ikmen and Mehmet Süleyman out onto the dark streets of Istanbul. On 21 January, a half-decapitated corpse in the poor multicultural district of Tarlabasi poses a particularly frustrating and gruesome mystery. But as the months pass and the violence increases, it turns into a hunt for that rare phenomenon in the golden city on the Bosphorus: a serial killer.
Desperate to uncover the killer’s twisted logic as the body count rises, Ikmen and Süleyman find only more questions. How are the victims connected? What is the significance of the number 21? And how many Istanbullus must die before they find the answers?
city-pick Istanbul by Heather Reyes (editor)
Over sixty superb writers reveal what makes Istanbul one of the world’s most extraordinary cities:
Orhan Pamuk makes his own museum
Elif Shafak shops in the Grand Bazaar
William Dalrymple rides the Bosphorous ferries
Oya Baydar pictures some ordinary lives
Geert Mak enjoys the Galata Bridge
Orhan Kemal comes in from the countryside
Maureen Freely adores her adopted city
Yashar Kemal recalls a moving tradition
Rory Maclean travels by ‘magic bus’
Introduction by Barbara Nadel.
Istanbul Istanbul by Burhan Sönmez
“A wrenching love poem to Istanbul told between torture sessions by four prisoners in their cell beneath the city. An ode to pain in which Dostoevsky meets The Decameron.” —John Ralston Saul, author of On Equilibrium; former president, PEN International
“Istanbul is a city of a million cells, and every cell is an Istanbul unto itself.”
Below the ancient streets of Istanbul, four prisoners—Demirtay the student, the doctor, Kamo the barber, and Uncle Küheylan—sit, awaiting their turn at the hands of their wardens. When they are not subject to unimaginable violence, the condemned tell one another stories about the city, shaded with love and humor, to pass the time. Quiet laughter is the prisoners’ balm, delivered through parables and riddles. Gradually, the underground narrative turns into a narrative of the above-ground. Initially centered around people, the book comes to focus on the city itself. And we discover there is as much suffering and hope in the Istanbul above ground as there is in the cells underground.
Despite its apparently bleak setting, this novel—translated into seventeen languages—is about creation, compassion, and the ultimate triumph of the imagination.
Farewell Fountain Street by Selçuk Altun, Mel Keene (translator), Nilgün Dungan (translator)
Ziya Bey has six months left to live. From his mansion on Farewell Fountain Street, the Ottoman aristocrat plans to tie up some questionable business affairs and say goodbye to the people he cherishes. He hires Artvin, a disillusioned professor with a troubled past, to assist him. Intrigued by his employer’s mysterious household, Artvin spends the days uncovering Ziya Bey’s turbulent life story.
The two men become bound together as they reveal dark elements from their pasts. But when Ziya Bey releases Artvin from his duties sooner than expected, Artvin inherits a spiral of violence he cannot control.
In this gripping ride through the streets of Istanbul, two men learn one another’s secrets. But can either of them learn to live with themselves?
Like a Sword Wound by Ahmet Altan
Altan’s Ottoman Quartet spans the fifty years between the final decades of the 19th century and the post-WWI rise of Ataturk as both unchallenged leader and visionary reformer of the new Turkey. The four books tell the stories of an unforgettable cast of characters, among them: an Ottoman army officer, the Sultan’s personal doctor, a scion of the royal house whose Western education brings him into conflict with his family’s legacy, and a beguiling Turkish aristocrat who, while fond of her emancipated life in Paris, finds herself drawn to a conservative Muslim spiritual leader. Intrigue, betrayal, love, war, progress, and tradition provide a colourful backdrop against which their lives play out. All the while, the society to which they belong is transforming, and the Sublime Empire disintegrates. Here is a Turkish saga reminiscent of War and Peace, that traces not only the social currents of the time but also the erotic and emotional lives of its characters.
Any we’ve missed, please add in the Comments below…
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