For centuries following its reestablishment as Constantinople in AD 330, Istanbul served as the capital of three great empires: Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman. The city's maze-like streets and high balconies, its steep alleys, flower gardens, and forested hillsides remain soaked in the vestiges of that imperial past, and it is to that past and to Istanbul's unearthly moods and waters that so many writers and diarists journeyed in search of escape, knowledge, happiness, or sheer wonderment. An Istanbul Anthology takes us on a nostalgic journey through the city with travelers' accounts of the sights, smells, and sounds of Istanbul's bazaars and coffeehouses, its grand palaces and gardens, crumbling buildings, and ancient churches and mosques, and the waters that so haunt and define it. With writers such as Gustave Flaubert, Pierre Loti, Ernest Hemingway, Mark Twain, and Andre Gide, we discover and rediscover the many delights of this great city of antiquity, meeting point of East and West, and gateway to peoples and civilizations.

The entrancing spirit of the fabled city of Istanbul through the eyes of writers and travelers

About the Author
Kaya Genc is a novelist and essayist from Istanbul. His writing has appeared in The Believer, The Guardian, The Financial Times, and New Humanist, and he is a contributing editor at Index on Censorship. He blogs at kayagenc.net.


Book Information
ISBN 9789774167218
Author Kaya Genc
Format Hardback
Page Count 160
Imprint The American University in Cairo Press
Publisher The American University in Cairo Press
Weight(grams) 261g