In My Hands Today…

Last Letter from Istanbul – Lucy Foley

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Constantinople, 1921

Each day Nur gazes across the waters of the Bosphorus to her childhood home, a grand white house, nestled on the opposite bank. Memories float on the breeze – the fragrance of the fig trees, the saffron sunsets of languid summer evenings. But now those days are dead.

The house has been transformed into an army hospital, it is a prize of war in the hands of the British. And as Nur weaves through the streets carrying the embroideries that have become her livelihood, Constantinople swarms with Allied soldiers – a reminder of how far her she and her city have fallen.

The most precious thing in Nur’s new life is the orphan in her care – a boy with a terrible secret. When he falls dangerously ill Nur’s world becomes entwined with the enemy’s. She must return to where she grew up, and plead for help from Medical Officer George Monroe.

As the lines between enemy and friend become fainter, a new danger emerges – something even more threatening than the lingering shadow of war.

In My Hands Today…

The Virgin’s Knot – Holly Lynn Payne

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She is called Nurdane, the famed weaver of Mavisu. From her remote mountain village in southwestern Turkey, she creates dowries for young brides: dazzling rugs that are marvels of shape and colour, texture and light. Her unique rugs possess remarkable healing qualities that have inspired a local legend, but it is her hands that are at the heart of her mystery. An artist’s hands. A virgin’s hands. An extraordinary series of events drives Nurdane to question the limitations of her faith and culture as she is caught between the cost of remaining pure in body and spirit…or risking everything for the chance to live a loving life.

In My Hands Today…

The Gigolo Murder: A Turkish Delight Mystery – Mehmet Murat Somer

6438920With its exotic Istanbul setting and racy peeks into the city’s nightlife, The Kiss Murder left readers eager for more of Mehmet Murat Somer’s charmingly original heroine.

Software programmer by day and drag-queen club owner by night, our girl is back again, just jilted and feeling so blue she’s violet until she meets the hunky, married lawyer, Haluk Perkedem.

When their conversation is interrupted by a phone call delivering news that his brother-in-law has been arrested for the murder of a notorious gigolo, she decides to put her sleuthing instincts and Thai kickboxing skills to work unraveling the crime.

In My Hands Today…

Along the Bosphorus – Orhan Pamuk

A shim11690mering evocation, by turns intimate and panoramic, of one of the world’s great cities, by its foremost writer.

Orhan Pamuk was born in Istanbul and still lives in the family apartment building where his mother first held him in her arms. His portrait of his city is thus also a self-portrait, refracted by memory and the melancholy–or hüzün– that all Istanbullus share: the sadness that comes of living amid the ruins of a lost empire.

With cinematic fluidity, Pamuk moves from his glamorous, unhappy parents to the gorgeous, decrepit mansions overlooking the Bosphorus; from the dawning of his self-consciousness to the writers and painters–both Turkish and foreign–who would shape his consciousness of his city.

Like Joyce’s Dublin and Borges’ Buenos Aires, Pamuk’s Istanbul is a triumphant encounter of place and sensibility, beautifully written and immensely moving

In My Hands Today…

 

The Flea Palace – Elif Shafak

8322746Set within a once-stately apartment block in Istanbul, The Flea Palace tells the story of Bonbon Palace, built by Russian noble émigré Pavel Antipov for his wife Agripina at the end of the Tsarist reign. It is now sadly dilapidated, flea-infested, and home to ten very different individuals and their families.

There’s a womanizing, hard-drinking academic with a penchant for philosophy; a ‘clean freak’ and her lice-ridden daughter; a lapsed Jew in search of true love; and a charmingly naïve mistress whose shadowy past lurks in the building. When the trash at Bonbon Palace is stolen, a mysterious sequence of events unfolds that result in a soul-searching quest for truth. By turns comic and tragic, this is an outstandingly original novel driven by an overriding sense of social justice.

Elif Shafak gives us a bird’s-eye insight into each apartment, and we see their comic and tragic lives