Istanbul_ The Collected Traveler_ An Inspired Companion Guide - Barrie Kerper [61]
The Janissary Tree (2006), The Snake Stone (2007), and The Bellini Card (2009), all by Jason Goodwin (Farrar, Straus & Giroux), compose an Edgar Award-winning Ottoman Empire mystery series, whose main character, Yashim, is a eunuch.
“I loved standing in the Aya Sofya and thinking about the fact that 1,400 years ago, when they were building this incredible structure, it was still the Dark Ages in Western Europe. My husband, Jerry Webman, and I were lucky to be in Istanbul in the winter because we will always have this magical image of how the city looked covered in snow during the once-in-a-decade snowstorm. Jerry really loved drinking rakı throughout our meals, and I really loved Dhoku Kilim in the Grand Bazaar: Hasan was so helpful and Dhoku’s rugs were the only modern kilim designs I saw in Istanbul. We bought a large one for the living room at our beach house and it arrived in days, safe and sound. And it would be careless of me not to mention my good friend (and my brother’s Yale roommate thirty years ago), Resit Ergener, who holds a PhD in economics and is a university instructor, an author, and a tour guide with an encyclopedic knowledge of Istanbul. He’s been a guide since 1985 and takes incredible pride and joy in introducing visitors to Turkey.” (Resit may be reached by telephone at +90 533 269 4393 or by e-mail at regener@superonline.com or toturkey@dreamtours.com.)
—Susan Ginsburg, literary agent, Writers House
Memed, My Hawk, by Yashar Kemal (Collins and Harvill, 1961). This is a beautifully crafted novel that will keep you up late at night, anxious to see what will unfold. The word “swashbuckling” doesn’t exactly apply, but the story is by turns breathlessly exciting, violent, tender, wonderful, and true in the way that it evokes southern Turkey in the early years of the twentieth century.
Rise the Euphrates, by Carol Edgarian (Random House, 1994). Edgarian’s novel tells of an Armenian woman who escapes the 1915 tragedy and later pins her hopes and dreams on her conflicted American granddaughter.
Seraglio, by Janet Wallach (Nan A. Talese, 2003). Wallach began this book as a biography of Aimée Dubuca de Rivery, the subject of a chapter in The Wilder Shores of Love as well as in The Palace of Tears (both in the Istanbul section)—but ended up writing it as a historical novel. She maintains that, once she started her research on Aimée, it became clear that very little conclusive information exists about her. Yet she concedes that many people believe Aimée’s story to be true—I am one of them, as it seems there are enough coincidences for it to be so.
The Towers of Trebizond, by Rose Macauley (Carroll & Graf, 1956). I love making lists of books with great opening lines, and the one from this book has long been a favorite: “ ‘Take my camel, dear,’ said my aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass.” Macauley creates characters much like those in a Barbara Pym novel, which is to say they’re quirky or eccentric, and utterly lovable. The characters in this story travel to a number of destinations within Turkey, including Istanbul.
INTERVIEW
Tom Brosnahan
Tom Brosnahan is the reason I wanted to go to Turkey in the first place. I met him in the 1980s, when I worked for the original Banana Republic. Readers who remember the catalogs and stores know that in those days it was a much more interesting company than it is now—founders Mel and Patricia Ziegler had a vision for a company that sold not only clothes good for traveling the globe but also books, and not only guidebooks but tomes on all sorts of related subjects that curious travelers would want to read. Not every retail store had space for books, but a few in New York did, and I arranged for Tom to appear at two of them. He had written Turkey on $5 a