Turkey's greatest living novelist guides us through the monuments and lost paradises, dilapidated Ottoman villas, back streets and waterways of Istanbul - the city of his birth and the home of his imagination. This is a supremely moving account of one man's love affair with the city that has been his home since his birth.

Reviews

"'This evocative book succeeds at both its tasks. It is one of the most touching childhood memoirs I have read in a very long time; and it makes me yearn - more than any glossy tourist brochure could possibly do - to be once again in Istanbul.' Noel Malcom, Sunday Telegraph 'An extraordinary and transcendentally beautiful book... It is a long time since I have read a book of such crystalline originality, or one that moved me so much.' Katie Hickman"