Lonely Planet İstanbul Guide

introduced Europe to Loti’s almond-eyed Turkish lover and to the mysterious and all-pervasive attractions of the city itself. After Loti, writers such as Harold Nicolson set popular stories in the city. Nicolson’s 1921 novel Sweet Waters is a moving love story cum political thriller set in İstanbul during the Balkan Wars. Nicolson, who lived here as a diplomat, based the novel’s main character on his wife, Vita Sackville West. Graham Greene’s 1932 thriller Stamboul Train focuses on a group of passengers travelling between Ostend and İstanbul on the Orient Express . It was filmed in 1934 as Orient Express . Thriller writer Eric Ambler used İstanbul as a setting in three highly regarded novels: The Mask of Dimitrios (1939), Journey into Fear (1940) and The Light of Day (1962). Historical novels set here include The Rage of the Vulture (Barry Unsworth; 1982), The Stone Woman (Tariq Ali; 2001), The Calligrapher’s Night (Yasmine Ghata; 2006) and The Dark Angel (Mika Waltari; 1952). Young readers will enjoy The Oracle of Stamboul (Michael David Lukas; 2011). Although best known as award-winning author Orhan Pamuk’s English translator and as the daughter of American author John Freely, Maureen Freely is also a writer of fiction. Two of her best-known novels, The Life of the Party (1986) and Sailing Through Byzantium (2013), are semi autobiographical tales set in İstanbul. Alan Drew’s 2008 novel Gardens of Water follows the lives of two families in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake that struck western Turkey (including İstanbul’s outskirts) in 1999. Joseph Kanon’s 2012 thriller Istanbul Passage is set just after the end of WWII, when espionage is rife and Mossad is attempting to illegally transport Jewish refugees through the city en route to Palestine. Travel Writing Constantinople