The Irish-American physicist, academic and traveller John Freely
wrote more than sixty lively books on travel, history and science
before he died in 2017, aged 90. But It was Istanbul, where he
emigrated with his family in 1960 to take up a post teaching
physics at the American Robert College, that turned him into a
writer. His first book, 'Strolling Through Istanbul' – written
with his fellow academic Hilary Sumner-Boyd – was an instant
success when it was published in 1972 and has never been out of
print since. With the exception of Oğuz, so thin that he was known
as The Ghost because he barely cast a shadow, everyone in John
Freely's rumbustious memoir, including the author himself, is
larger than life. Bohemian Istanbul was a haven for myriad misfits
who found their feet in the city. Clamorous, glamorous, eccentric,
cosmopolitan and frequently outrageous, they included the
'berserker' Peter Pfeiffer, a resourceful exile with three
passports; Aliye Berger, the beautiful queen of bohemian Pera; the
writer James Baldwin and, fleetingly, the future Pope John XXIII.
This elegy for a lost world encapsulates the flavour of their daily
life and nightly excesses. Well lubricated with lemon vodka and
Hill Cocktails served by Sumner-Boyd's gloomy housekeeper, 'Monik
Depressive', the Freely crowd weave their way from the Galatasaray
fish market and the taverns of Çiçek Pasajı to the Russian
restaurant Rejans, and frequently on to the Freely household on the
Bosphorus hills, where a party will soon be in full swing and
eggnog flowing freely. 'Stamboul Ghosts' is lllustrated with Ara
Guler's poignant black-and-white photographs, which make of
Freely's beloved city an evocative stage-set.
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