This blog was originally going to be a commentary about my novels, which are set in 19th century Istanbul, or rather about seeing Istanbul through the eyes of the main character in the series, Kamil Pasha. (click the page above for information about the Kamil Pasha novels.) Before long, my anthropologist/social scientist […]
Something a little different to turn down the heat — in temperature and in politics. I enjoyed this tour given by writers of the rooms they write in. I recognized some of my own quirks. I have to block out the view in order to write. I make piles. My dining table is full of […]
Painting by Osman Hamdi Bey
For those wishing to understand — and visualize — late 19th-century Istanbul, the period in which the Kamil Pasha novels are set, I recommend Asli Sancar’s new book, Ottoman Women: Myth and Reality (Light Publications). It has many interesting facts about daily life, the harem as a space and an institution, […]
I spent part of yesterday afternoon looking for Easter stollen — or really anything to commemorate Easter. After all, I’m living on the upper Bosphorus on the European side, neighborhoods that used to have big Christian populations and are still studded with Greek Orthodox churches. In the 1980s, there was a Greek Orthodox (Rum) bakery […]
A couple of weeks ago, the Republican People’s Party (CHP) complained in parliament that the Turkish military had withdrawn its troops from Iraq the day after the US had urged it to do so, implying that the decision had been made at the behest of the Americans. The army reacted angrily, stating that the decision […]
A new review of The Abyssinian Proof has appeared on the I Love A Mystery website. Click here for the full review.
From Aaron Stander’s review: THE ABYSSINIAN PROOF is a rich and remarkable historical mystery…. Kamil is a most engaging protagonist — aristocratic and educated, sensitive and artistic, yet able to kick down doors and […]
I have added a blogroll link for Linda Barlow, author of fifteen published novels and a writer from whom I have learned a lot, as you will from her blog about writing and publishing — and about life in general.
My hairdresser in Nisantasi is right behind the Tesvikiye Mosque, a neo-baroque edifice with tall white columns completed in 1854. The mosque yard is the only oasis of serenity in the entire district, which bustles with well-heeled shoppers and is threaded through with bumper-to-bumper traffic. When Kamil’s sister Feride lived there in the 1880s, Nisantasi […]
A review of The AbyssinianProof in The Scotsman (click here)
The beauty of jetlag is that it opens up a space in your life that is normally closed. It is 5 am (yesterday it was 4:30 am when I awoke, the day before 4 am). Dogs are barking in the distance. The Bosphorus outside my window is a band of deeper black except where the […]