*The* English-language bookshop to visit in Istanbul

On a recent trip to Turkey, I was lucky to stumble upon an amazing bookshop in Istanbul. From the front, it is pretty unremarkable, with the simple sign "BOOK SHOP" in all caps announcing its presence. Walk inside, however, and you will be blown away by the huge collection of English-language books on all aspects of Turkish culture and history. 

(In Istanbul, they actually call the Book Shop Galeri Kayseri.)

I immediately grabbed The Forty Rules of Love, by Elif Shafak, because I loved her previous novel, The Island of Missing Trees. Plus, the cover is gorgeous, don't you think? I asked the bookseller, a handsome, soft-spoken man, to recommend a book by Orhan Pamuk, as I knew that he was one of Turkey’s most prominent writers, so he handed me Istanbul: Memories and the City. He also said that I had to read Portrait of a Turkish Family, by Irfan Orga, and that Jason Goodwin was a contemporary author and historian who wrote about Turkish history, so I grabbed his novel The Janissary Tree to round things out. Yes, I dropped a pretty penny at this place, but I am so glad that I did. I learned so much about Turkish culture and history, which happens to be absolutely fascinating, from the two books that I’m going to focus on today: Portrait of a Turkish Family and The Janissary Tree. 

Portrait of a Turkish Family is the memoir of Irfan Orga, a Turkish fighter pilot who lived from 1908 to 1970. In it, he describes his idyllic childhood with his grandparents, parents, younger brother Mehmet, and younger sister Muazzez. A wealthy Turkish family who lived during the time of the Sultans, they had few cares and many servants to make their lives easier. The first couple of chapters of this book contain some of the most voluptuous, descriptive scenes in the entire book, such as when Irfan accompanied his grandmother to the hammam, or Turkish baths, when he was a little boy (who knew the hammam was a place of such gossip and intrigue!), or what a Turkish circumcision ceremony was like at that time (did you know they brought in clowns to try to lighten the boys’ understandably anxious moods?). 

Everything changes, though, when WWII breaks out in 1914 and Turkey allies with Germany. Irfan’s father and uncle are both drafted into the army and killed shortly after–his father at the Battle of Gallipoli. To top it all off, Irfan’s family home burns to the ground along with all of their life savings, which Irfan’s mother had stashed somewhere inside. Left completely penniless, Irfan’s mother, a good Muslim woman who previously led a pampered, secluded life, is forced to become the head of her family and step out into the world to earn money so they don’t all starve. 

Theirs is a brutal, painful struggle to survive, with Irfan’s mother sending him and his brother away to a military school 1919 so she’d have two fewer mouths to feed. Irfan never forgave her for this, even as an adult, which was one of the saddest aspects of this truly tragic memoir. If you can handle a sad, true story, this book is really worth reading because 1) it allows you a peek inside some fascinating Turkish customs, and 2) it shows you Turkey in a time of historical transformation–moving from the rule of the Sultans to the rule of Kemal Ataturk, who on October 29, 1923, declared Turkey a Republic and decreed that religion and public affairs must be separate. 

Hagia Sophia

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Moving on to . . . Jason Goodwin!

Before I write anything, I need to mention that Jason Goodwin is not a Turkish author. (You probably could have guessed this from his name.) He is actually a British author who studied Byzantine history at Cambridge University, and his obsession with Istanbul’s influence on the region inspired him to write Lords of the Horizons: A History of the Ottoman Empire, which I haven’t read yet, but plan to. 

Set in 1830s Istanbul, during the time of the Ottoman empire, The Janissary Tree is both a work of historical fiction and a whodunit. When a beautiful young concubine is found strangled in the Sultan’s harem and four young cadets of the “New Guard” go missing, one of them eventually found dead in a huge iron pot, Yashim the eunuch is called in to investigate the murders. Due to his status as a eunuch, or castrated man, Yashim is allowed to move around in places that other men are totally barred from—notably, the Sultan’s harem. 

The Janissaries, in case you don’t know (as I didn’t), were an elite fighting corps in the Ottoman army, revered for their military prowess. They were instrumental in the conquest of Constantinople in 1453. However, according to Britannica.com, “In the early 19th century [the time period of the novel] the Janissaries resisted the adoption of European reforms by the Ottoman army. Their end came in June 1826 in the so-called Auspicious Incident. On learning of the formation of new, Westernized troops, the Janissaries revolted. Sultan Mahmud II declared war on the rebels and, on their refusal to surrender, had cannon fire directed on their barracks. Most of the Janissaries were killed, and those who were taken prisoner were executed.” The Auspicious Incident, in which so many Janissaries were killed, plays a big part in Goodwin’s novel because Yashim comes to believe that the Janissaries who survived and now work in lowly professions to conceal their true identities may have plotted together to murder the four New Guard cadets and carry out their revenge. 

I am not going to reveal anything more, as this is a murder mystery and I don't want to spoil it for you, but I will say that I found the whodunit aspect of this book less compelling than the historical fiction aspect of it. Having just taken a weeklong trip to Turkey, I was really interested to learn more about Turkish culture and history, and this novel really did that for me. Goodwin’s scholarship and knowledge of this part of the world is undeniable, and his wonderfully descriptive writing makes you feel that you are there, in a fascinating place of luxury, intrigue, deception, and danger. And Istanbul’s complicated, many-layered history can be felt at all times. 

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Finally . . . If you’d like to learn more about how the city of Constantinople became the city of Istanbul, I would highly recommend watching the docudrama Rise of Empires: Ottomans on Netflix (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9244578/). It shows how Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II waged a bloody, months-long campaign to rip Constantinople from Roman emperor Constantine XI–and was ultimately successful.  

Karga Seven, who produced Rise of Empires: Ottomans, also has another interesting project in the works. You can read about it here: https://variety.com/2017/tv/global/karga-seven-to-shoot-the-janissary-tree-mystery-series-in-turkey-exclusive-1202011836/.