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A concubine is strangled in the Sultan's palace harem, and a young
cadet is found butchered in the streets of Istanbul. Delving deep
into the city's crooked alleyways, and deeper still into its
tumultuous past, the eunuch Yashim discovers that some people will
go to any lengths to preserve the traditions of the Ottoman Empire.
Brilliantly evoking Istanbul in the 1830s, The Janissary Tree is a
bloody, witty and fast-paced literary thriller with a spectacular
cast.
Charged by the Sultan to find a stolen painting by Bellini, Yashim
the detective enlists the help of his friend Palewski, the Polish
Ambassador, and goes undercover. Venice in 1840 is a city of empty
palazzos and silent canals, and Palewski starts to mingle with
Venetian dealers - but when two bodies turn up in the canal, he
realises that art in Venice is a deadly business, and it is up to
Yashim to attempt to rescue his intrepid friend from forces bigger
than they had ever imagined . . .
It is Istanbul, 1838, and Lefevre, a French archaeologist, has
arrived in Istanbul determined to uncover a lost Byzantine
treasure. Yashim is hired to investigate him, but when the man
turns up dead, there is only one suspect: Yashim himself. Once
again, the investigator finds himself in a race against time to
uncover the startling truth behind a shadowy secret society
dedicated to the revival of the Byzantine Empire, caught in a
deadly game deep beneath the city streets, a place where the stakes
are high - and betrayal is death.
When the body of a Russian agent is found down a monastery well,
Yashim knows exactly who to blame. Fevzi Ahmet Pasha, commander of
the Ottoman fleet. Years ago, when Yashim first entered the
sultan's service, Fevzi Ahmet was his mentor. Ruthless, cruel, and
- in Yashim's eyes - ultimately ineffective, he is the only man who
makes him afraid. And now Yashim must confront the secret that
Fevzi Pasha has been keeping all these years, a secret whose roots
lie deep in the tortured atmosphere of the sultan's harem, where
normal rules are suspended, and women can simply disappear. Once
again, Yashim and his friends encounter treachery and politics,
played out against the backdrop of 1840s Istanbul.
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Evil Eye (Paperback)
Jason Goodwin
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R535
R453
Discovery Miles 4 530
Save R82 (15%)
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From the Edgar(R) Award-winning author of "The Janissary Tree"
comes the fourth and most captivating Investigator Yashim mystery
yet It takes a writer of prodigious talents to conjure the Istanbul
of the Ottoman Empire in all its
majesty. In three previous novels, Jason Goodwin has taken us on
stylish, suspenseful, and vibrant excursions into its exotic
territory. Now, in "An Evil Eye," the mystery of Istanbul runs
deeper than ever before. It's 1839, and the admiral of the Ottoman
fleet has defected to the Egyptians. It's up to the intrepid
Investigator Yashim to uncover the man's motives. Of course, Fevzi
Ahmet is no stranger to Yashim--it was Fevzi who taught the
investigator his craft years ago. He's the only man whom Yashim has
ever truly feared: ruthless, cruel, and unswervingly loyal to the
sultan. So what could have led Yashim's former mentor to betray the
Ottoman Empire? Yashim's search draws him into the sultan's
seraglio, a well-appointed world with an undercurrent of fear,
ambition, and deep-seated superstition. When the women of the
sultan's orchestra begin inexplicably to grow ill and die, Yashim
discovers that the admiral's defection may be rooted somewhere in
the torturous strictures of the sultan's harem. No one knows more
about the Ottoman Empire and Istanbul than Jason Goodwin, of whom
Janet
Maslin wrote in "The New York Times": "Mr. Goodwin uses rich
historical detail to elevate the books in this series . . . far
above the realm of everyday sleuthing."
In nineteenth-century Istanbul, a Polish prince has been kidnapped.
His assassination has been bungled and his captors have taken him
to an unused farmhouse. Little do they realize that their
revolutionary cell has been penetrated by their enemies, who use
the code name La Piuma (the Feather). Yashim is convinced that the
prince is alive. But he has no idea where, or who La Piuma is - and
has become dangerously distracted by falling in love. As he draws
closer to the prince's whereabouts and to the true identity of La
Piuma, Yashim finds himself in the most treacherous situation of
his career: can he rescue the prince along with his romantic
dreams? Jason Goodwin's bestselling 'Yashim' series has been
published across the globe and received huge critical acclaim. In
The Baklava Club, Goodwin takes Yashim on an adventure like no
other, through the stylish, sensual world of Ottoman Istanbul.
Winner of the Edgar Award for Best Novel It is 1836. Europe is
modernizing and the Ottoman Empire must follow suit. But just
before the sultan announces sweeping changes, a wave of murders
threatens the fragile balance of power in his court. Who is behind
them? Only one intelligence agent can be trusted to find out:
Yashim, a man both brilliant and near-invisible in this world, an
investigator who can walk with ease in the great halls of the
empire, in its streets, and even within its harems--because, of
course, Yashim is a eunuch. His investigation points to the
Janissaries, who, for four hundred years were the empire's elite
soldiers. Crushed by the sultan, could they now be staging a brutal
comeback? And can they be stopped without throwing Istanbul into
political chaos?
This first book in the Investigator Yashim series is a richly
entertaining tale, full of exotic history and intrigue.
For six hundred years, the Ottoman Empire swelled and declined. Islamic, martial, civilized, and tolerant, it advanced in three centuries from the dusty foothills of Anatolia to rule on the Danube and the Nile; at its height, Indian rajahs and the kings of France beseeched the empire's aid. In its last three hundred years the empire seemed ready to collapse, a prodigy of survival and decay. In this striking evocation of the empire's power, Jason Goodwin explores how the Ottomans rose and how, against all odds, they lingered on. In doing so, he also offers a long look back to the origins of problems that plague present-day Kosovars and Serbs.
Marco Polo’s account of his journey throughout the East in the thirteenth century was one of the earliest European travel narratives, and it remains the most important. The merchant-traveler from Venice, the first to cross the entire continent of Asia, provided us with accurate descriptions of life in China, Tibet, India, and a hundred other lands, and recorded customs, natural history, strange sights, historical legends, and much more. From the dazzling courts of Kublai Khan to the perilous deserts of Persia, no book contains a richer magazine of marvels than the Travels.
This edition, selected and edited by the great scholar Manuel Komroff, also features the classic and stylistically brilliant Marsden translation, revised and corrected, as well as Komroff’s Introduction to the 1926 edition.
Investigator Yashim travels to Venice in the latest installment of
the Edgar(R) Award-winning author Jason Goodwin's captivating
series Jason Goodwin's first Yashim mystery, "The Janissary"
"Tree," brought home the Edgar(R) Award for Best Novel. His
follow-up, "The Snake Stone," more than lived up to expectations
and was hailed by Marilyn Stasio in "The New York Times Book Review
"as "a magic carpet ride to the most exotic place on earth." Now,
in "The Bellini Card," Jason Goodwin takes us back into his
"intelligent, gorgeous and evocative" ("The Independent" "on
Sunday") world, as dazzling as a hall of mirrors and utterly
compelling. Istanbul, 1840: the new sultan, Abdulmecid, has heard a
rumor that Bellini's vanished masterpiece, a portrait of Mehmet the
Conqueror, may have resurfaced in Venice. Yashim, our eunuch
detective, is promptly asked to investigate, but--aware that the
sultan's advisers are against any extravagant repurchase of the
painting-- decides to deploy his disempowered Polish ambassador
friend, Palewski, to visit Venice in his stead. Palewski arrives in
disguise in down-and-out Venice, where a killer is at large as
dealers, faded aristocrats, and other unknown factions seek to
uncover the whereabouts of the missing Bellini. But is it the
Bellini itself that endangers all, or something associated with its
original loss? And why is it that all the killer's victims are
somehow tied to the alluring Contessa d'Aspi d'Istria? Will the
Austrians unmask Palewski, or will the killer find him first? Only
Yashim can uncover the truth behind the manifold mysteries.
Detective, polyglot, chef, eunuch--Investigator Yashim returns
in this evocative Edgar(R) Award-winning series set in Istanbul at
the end of the Ottoman Empire
Istanbul, 1838. In his palace on the Bosphorus, Sultan Mahmud II is
dying and the city swirls with rumors and alarms. The unexpected
arrival of a French archaeologist determined to track down lost
Byzantine treasures throws the Greek community into confusion.
Yashim Togalu is once again enlisted to investigate. But when the
archaeologist's mutilated body is discovered outside the French
embassy, it turns out there is only one suspect: Yashim himself. As
the body count starts to rise, Yashim must uncover the startling
truth behind a shadowy society dedicated to the revival of the
Byzantine Empire, encountering along the way such vibrant
characters as Lord Byron's doctor and the Sultan's West Indies-born
mother, the Valide. With striking wit and irresistible flair, Jason
Goodwin takes us into a world where the stakes are high, betrayal
is death--and the pleasure to the reader is immense.
The Ottoman Empire has exerted a long, strong pull on Western minds and hearts. Over six hundred years the Empire swelled and declined; the royal line bent, but never broke, from Osman, born in a desert tent around 1280 to Abdul Mecid, dying in a Paris flat in 1942. Its precipitous rise from a dusty fiefdom in the foothills of Anatolia to a power which ruled on the Danube and the Euphrates stunned contemp- oraries. For three hundred years it held sway and Istanbul had the richest court in Europe. But the decline was prodigious, protracted, and total. Dramatic and passionate, detailed and alive, comic and gruesome, THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE charts the swirling history from the first campaigns to the Charge of the Light Brigade, from the Crusades to the Dardenelles, and brings to life innumerable aspects of Ottoman life, caravans carrying parcels of spice and bags of gold, Western emissaries witnessing executions, distant sentries on far frontiers, jewels, meals, shadow plays and stray dogs. A history, a journey, anda world all in one.
Defoe's account of the bubonic plague that swept London in 1665 remains as vivid as it is harrowing. Based on Defoe's own childhood memories and prodigious research, A Journal of the Plague Year walks the line between fiction, history, and reportage. In meticulous and unsentimental detail it renders the daily life of a city under siege; the often gruesome medical precautions and practices of the time; the mass panics of a frightened citizenry; and the solitary travails of Defoe's narrator, a man who decides to remain in the city through it all, chronicling the course of events with an unwavering eye. Defoe's Journal remains perhaps the greatest account of a natural disaster ever written.
This Modern Library Paperback Classic is set from the original edition published in 1722.
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