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A Strangeness in My Mind

A Strangeness in My Mind
  • Author(s): Ekin Oklap (translator), Orhan Pamuk
  • Location(s): Istanbul (Constantinople)
  • Genre(s): Fiction, In Translation
  • Era(s): Contemporary

As a child, Mevlut always felt like he was missing out. When he moves to Istanbul – ‘the centre of the world’ – he is immediately enthralled. He wanders through its alleys for forty years, working as a street...

An Ottoman Traveller

An Ottoman Traveller
  • Author(s): Evliya Çelebi
  • Location(s): Iran, Istanbul (Constantinople), Ottoman Empire, Vienna
  • Genre(s): Travelogue
  • Era(s): 17th century

Evliya Celebi was the Pepys of the Ottoman world—a diligent, adventurous and honest recorder with a puckish wit and humour. He is in the pantheon of the great travel-writers of the world, though virtually unknown to western readers. This...

Arabesk

Arabesk
  • Author(s): Barbara Nadel
  • Location(s): Istanbul (Constantinople)
  • Genre(s): Crime, Fiction
  • Era(s): 20t century

When the wife of one of Istanbul’s best known popular singers is found dead and his baby daughter missing, the newly promoted Inspector Suleyman, scion of one of Turkey’s most aristocratic families, finds himself plunged into the magnificently vulgar,...

Baksheesh

Baksheesh
  • Author(s): Esmahan Aykol
  • Location(s): Istanbul (Constantinople)
  • Genre(s): Crime, Fiction
  • Era(s): Modern

Kati Hirschel, in her thirties, is the proud owner of Istanbul’s only crime bookshop. She has learned the corrupt ways of her adored city and soon takes possession of an apartment obtained with the help of a generous bribe...

Bliss

Bliss
  • Author(s): O Z Livaneli
  • Location(s): Anatolia, Istanbul (Constantinople)
  • Genre(s): Fiction
  • Era(s): early 21st century

Fifteen-year-old Meryem lives in a rural village in Eastern Anatolia, Turkey. Her simple, conventional way of life changes dramatically after her uncle, a sheikh in a dervish order, rapes her–and condemns her to death for shaming the family. Asked...

Blood Business

Blood Business
  • Author(s): Barbara Nadel
  • Location(s): Istanbul (Constantinople)
  • Genre(s): Fiction, Mystery
  • Era(s): Modern

(Ikmen Mystery 22) Brothers Ugur and Lokman Bulut are locked in a bitter inheritance battle and need a sample of their mother’s DNA to contest her Will. But when her body is exhumed, her corpse is found to be...

Cloud Cuckoo Land

Cloud Cuckoo Land
  • Author(s): Anthony Doerr
  • Location(s): Idaho, Istanbul (Constantinople)
  • Genre(s): Fiction, Fantasy, Historical
  • Era(s): 15th Century/contemporary

Fifteenth-century Constantinople. Present day Idaho. The future, and humanity’s last hope. Across time and space, five young dreamers are bound by a single ancient text. Together, they tell a story of a world in peril; of the power of...

Constantinople

Constantinople
  • Author(s): Edmondo De Amicis
  • Location(s): Istanbul (Constantinople)
  • Genre(s): Historical, Nonfiction
  • Era(s): 19th century

A remarkable nineteenth-century account of Istanbul – which begins with a dazzling description of the city gradually appearing through the fog as the author’s ship approaches the harbor – Constantinople expertly combines personal anecdote, breathtaking visual observation and entertaining...

Gardens of Water

Gardens of Water
  • Author(s): Alan Drew
  • Location(s): Istanbul (Constantinople)
  • Genre(s): Fiction
  • Era(s): 1999

Turkey, 1999. A devastating earthquake brings Istanbul crumbling to the ground, ripping apart the fragile stability of Sinan’s world. His family home becomes a makeshift tent in a camp run by Western missionaries whom he stubbornly distrusts, and he...

How To Betray Your Country

How To Betray Your Country
  • Author(s): James Wolff
  • Location(s): Istanbul (Constantinople)
  • Genre(s): Spy, Thriller
  • Era(s): Modern

Following on from the acclaimed debut novel Beside the Syrian Sea, this is the second title in a planned trilogy about loyalty and betrayal in the modern world. An authentic thriller about the thin line between following your conscience...

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