Losers' Tale," the first of the "Istanbul Quartet" series, is widely considered to be novelist Hikmet Temel Akarsu's magnum opus. It met with great critical acclaim in 1998, the year it was published. It lived up to be one of the most important books of the counterculture in the following years. Today, it is a cult handiwork describing the economical depression of the 1990s and the grunge movement in Turkey.In this novel, Akarsu depicts a very extraordinary, conspicuous and even startling picture of Istanbul's less known spots and domains. This first book of the "Istanbul Quartet" series, written in a style the author nicknamed as "Rock 'n' Roman" (Turkish for "Rock 'n' Novel"), focuses mainly on Kadikoy and its surrounding district. It talks about people who frequent underground locations, meet at a bar called "Decadence," and while suffering from an inevitable dejection, choose to be rebels along the lines of the "Losers' Club" which they identify themselves with.

'Altun offers us three delights for the price of one: a brilliantly edgy, witty thriller that rivals Highsmith; a metaphysical puzzle that Borges would be proud to call his own; and a tale of two assassins that conveys, better than any other novel I have read, the way that money talks in Istanbul.' - Maureen Freely "A deft, zinging whodunnit which is also a metaphysical puzzle worthy of the Oulipo group. Altun's prose has a dreamlike urgency; his novel is a major achievement." - John Ashbery After the death of his overbearing mother, the privileged Arda reclines in his wealth, reflecting on his young life and on the life of his father, the famous mathematician Muersel Ergenekon, who was murdered on Arda's fourteenth birthday. While on the other side of the city, 'your humble servant' Bedirhan has decided to pack in his ten-year career as an assassin. Their two lives become intrinsically bound in this remarkable thriller that takes us through the streets of Istanbul. We learn that Bedirhan in fact killed Arda's father, and that they share more in common than he or we could imagine. Meanwhile, Selcuk Altun, a former family friend, is playing a deadly game, providing Arda with clues to track down his father's killer. Selcuk Altun was born in Artvin, Turkey, in 1950. He lives in Istanbul, andSongs My Mother Never Taught Me is his fourth novel to be published in Turkish. He is a retired banking executive and a bibliophile.

For readers of Ken Follett's Kingsbridge series and Richard C. Morais's The Hundred-Foot Journey, a sweeping tale of love and the magic of food set during the Ottoman Empire. A Pasha of Cuisine is a rare talent in Ottoman lore. Only two, maybe three are born with such a gift every few centuries. A natural master of gastronomy, he is the sovereign genius who reigns over aromas and flavors and can use them to influence the hearts and minds, even the health, of those who taste his creations. In this fabulous novel, one such chef devises a plot bring down the Ottoman Empire--should he need to--in order to rescue the love of his life from the sultan's harem. Himself a survivor of the bloodiest massacre ever recorded within the Imperial Palace after the passing of the last sultan, he is spirited away through the palace kitchens, where his potential was recognized. Across the empire, he is apprenticed one by one to the best chefs in all culinary disciplines and trained in related arts, such as the magic of spices, medicine, and the influence of the stars. It is during his journeys that he finds happiness with the beautiful, fiery dancing girl Kamer, and the two make plans to marry. Before they can elope, Kamer is sold into the Imperial Harem, and the young chef must find his way back into the Imperial Kitchens and transform his gift into an unbeatable weapon.

Set at the end of the Tulip Era, a turning point in Ottoman history when international boundaries were beingm redrawn and social divisions exacerbated by lavish excesses among the aristocracy and increasing deprivation among the masses were propelling Istanbul into turmoil and rebellion, this is a fast-moving tale about two young men who, in their quest for love, set out to solve the mystery of a brutal murder and to retrieve a priceless tulip. The story is interweaved with historical and cultural detail, introducing the reader to life within royal palaces and dervish lodges, to horticultural secrets, innovative treatments for the insane, torture devices and conspiracies hatched in coffee houses and hamams by disaffected revolutionaries and gangsters. Iskender Pala creates a bewitching tapestry of the splendours and vices of Istanbul at a time when the world was still in thrall to its military, political and artistic achievements.

From one of the most important and acclaimed writers at work today, a thrilling new novel--part murder mystery, part love story--set amid the perils of religious repression in sixteenth-century Istanbul. When the Sultan commissions a great book to celebrate his royal self and his extensive dominion, he directs Enishte Effendi to assemble a cadre of the most acclaimed artists in the land. Their task: to illuminate the work in the European style. But because figurative art can be deemed an affront to Islam, this commission is a dangerous proposition indeed, and no one in the elite circle can know the full scope or nature of the project. Panic erupts when one of the chosen miniaturists disappears, and the Sultan demands answers within three days. The only clue to the mystery--or crime?--lies in the half-finished illuminations themselves. Has an avenging angel discovered the blasphemous work? Or is a jealous contender for the hand of Enishte's ravishing daughter, the incomparable Shekure, somehow to blame? Orhan Pamuk's My Name Is Red is at once a fantasy and a philosophical puzzle, a kaleidoscopic journey to the intersection of art, religion, love, sex, and power.

It is 1975, a perfect spring in Istanbul. Kemal and Sibel, children of two prominent families, are about to become engaged. But when Kemal encounters Füsun, a beautiful shopgirl and a distant relation, he becomes enthralled. And once they violate the code of virginity, a rift begins to open between Kemal and the world of the Westernized Istanbul bourgeoisie. In his pursuit of Füsun over the next eight years, Kemal becomes a compulsive collector of objects that chronicle his lovelorn progress—amassing a museum that is both a map of a society and of his heart. Orhan Pamuk’s first novel since winning the Nobel Prize is a stirring exploration of the nature of romance.

From the Nobel Prize winner and best-selling author of Snow and My Name Is Red: a soaring, panoramic new novel--his first since The Museum of Innocence--telling the unforgettable tale of an Istanbul street vendor and the love of his life. Since his boyhood in a poor village in Central Anatolia, Mevlut Karataş has fantasized about what his life would become. Not getting as far in school as he'd hoped, at the age of twelve he comes to Istanbul--"the center of the world"--and is immediately enthralled by both the old city that is disappearing and the new one that is fast being built. He follows his father's trade, selling boza (a traditional mildly alcoholic Turkish drink) on the street, and hoping to become rich, like other villagers who have settled the desolate hills outside the booming metropolis. But luck never seems to be on Mevlut's side. As he watches his relations settle down and make their fortunes, he spends three years writing love letters to a girl he saw just once at a wedding, only to elope by mistake with her sister. And though he grows to cherish his wife and the family they have, he stumbles toward middle age in a series of jobs leading nowhere. His sense of missing something leads him sometimes to the politics of his friends and intermittently to the teachings of a charismatic religious guide. But every evening, without fail, Mevlut still wanders the streets of Istanbul, selling boza and wondering at the "strangeness" in his mind, the sensation that makes him feel different from everyone else, until fortune conspires once more to let him understand at last what it is he has always yearned for. Told from different perspectives by a host of beguiling characters, A Strangeness in My Mind is a modern epic of coming of age in a great city, a brilliant tableau of life among the newcomers who have changed the face of Istanbul over the past fifty years. Here is a mesmerizing story of human longing, sure to take its place among Pamuk's finest achievements.

"An enchanting combination of compassion and cruelty . . . Elif Shafak is the best author to come out of Turkey in the last decade."-Orhan Pamuk The setting is a stately residence in Istanbul, built by Russian noble emigre Pavel Antipov for his wife Agripina at the end of the Tsarist reign-now sadly dilapidated, flea-infested and home to ten families. Shafak uses the structure of A Thousand and One Nights to construct a story-within-a-story narrative. Elif Shafak is an outstanding name amongst young Turkish authors. She has written four novels and won the Mevlana Prize for the best work in mystical and transcendental literature. She is in the middle of a residency at the Massachusetts Five College Program in women's studies and resides in Mount Holyoke, USA.

From one of Turkey’s most acclaimed and outspoken writers, a novel about the tangled histories of two families In her second novel written in English, Elif Shafak confronts her country’s violent past in a vivid and colorful tale set in both Turkey and the United States. At its center is the “bastard” of the title, Asya, a nineteen-year-old woman who loves Johnny Cash and the French Existentialists, and the four sisters of the Kazanci family who all live together in an extended household in Istanbul: Zehila, the zestful, headstrong youngest sister who runs a tattoo parlor and is Asya’s mother; Banu, who has newly discovered herself as a clairvoyant; Cevriye, a widowed high school teacher; and Feride, a hypochondriac obsessed with impending disaster. Their one estranged brother lives in Arizona with his wife and her Armenian daughter, Armanoush. When Armanoush secretly flies to Istanbul in search of her identity, she finds the Kazanci sisters and becomes fast friends with Asya. A secret is uncovered that links the two families and ties them to the 1915 Armenian deportations and massacres. Full of vigorous, unforgettable female characters, The Bastard of Istanbulis a bold, powerful tale that will confirm Shafak as a rising star of international fiction.

Shortlisted for the 2019 Booker Prize Named a Best Book of the Year byBookpage, NPR, Washington Post,andThe Economist A moving novel on the power of friendship in our darkest times, from internationally renowned writer and speaker Elif Shafak. In the pulsating moments after she has been murdered and left in a dumpster outside Istanbul, Tequila Leila enters a state of heightened awareness. Her heart has stopped beating but her brain is still active--for 10 minutes 38 seconds. While the Turkish sun rises and her friends sleep soundly nearby, she remembers her life--and the lives of others, outcasts like her. Tequila Leila's memories bring us back to her childhood in the provinces, a highly oppressive milieu with religion and traditions, shaped by a polygamous family with two mothers and an increasingly authoritarian father. Escaping to Istanbul, Leila makes her way into the sordid industry of sex trafficking, finding a home in the city's historic Street of Brothels. This is a dark, violent world, but Leila is tough and open to beauty, light, and the essential bonds of friendship. In Tequila Leila's death, the secrets and wonders of modern Istanbul come to life, painted vividly by the captivating tales of how Leila came to know and be loved by her friends. As her epic journey to the afterlife comes to an end, it is her chosen family who brings her story to a buoyant and breathtaking conclusion.

A literary discovery: an uproarious tragicomedy of modernization, in its first-ever English translation   Perhaps the greatest Turkish novel of the twentieth century, being discovered around the world only now, more than fifty years after its first publication, The Time Regulation Institute is an antic, freewheeling send-up of the modern bureaucratic state.   At its center is Hayri Irdal, an infectiously charming antihero who becomes entangled with an eccentric cast of characters--a television mystic, a pharmacist who dabbles in alchemy, a dignitary from the lost Ottoman Empire, a "clock whisperer"--at the Time Regulation Institute, a vast organization that employs a hilariously intricate system of fines for the purpose of changing all the clocks in Turkey to Western time. Recounted in sessions with his psychoanalyst, the story of Hayri Irdal's absurdist misadventures plays out as a brilliant allegory of the collision of tradition and modernity, of East and West, infused with a poignant blend of hope for the promise of the future and nostalgia for a simpler time. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

A thrilling tale which moves back and forth through time, from the early days of Byzantium to the thriving metropolis of Istanbul... A corpse is discovered at the base of the statue of Atatürk in old Istanbul, an antique coin left in its hand... But it’s not to be the last corpse and the bodies soon begin to pile up... And so the hunt for the killers begins... Seven murders, seven sovereigns, seven coins and seven ancient monuments, with one thread binding them all: the history of one of the world’s most mysterious and most dazzling cities.