Zeynel, a carpet merchant turned vampire, has accepted his fate and now searches for the stories of his past. With his ties to Istanbul threadbare after the passing of his wife, Ayse, he travels across the West in search of a new home. On the invitation of a young friend, Alfred Grimsley, Zeynel moves to a quiet English town where he is confronted by a fad for all things Turkish - but not as he knows it. Zeynel's new life is thrown off balance when Mora Strigoi, the vampire responsible for Zeynel's death, appears at his door begging for forgiveness. With Mora's arrival and Alfred on the trail of a mysterious serial killer, Zeynel must decide whether he can make peace with the past before everything he has built begins to unravel. The Carpet Merchant of Konstantiniyya, Vol II is the second and final instalment of the Eisner-nominated graphic novel. A modern Gothic story that takes apart the 'vampire as other' trope, it tells of the healing balm of compassion and the redemptive power of forgiveness.

Set in seventeenth-century Istanbul, The Carpet Merchant of Konstantiniyya, Vol I is a beautifully drawn meditation on love, home, faith and loss. It tells the story of Zeynel, an ordinary man surrounded by the extraordinary - his life, his death, and the aftermath of his transformation into a vampire. Born into an esteemed family of scholars, the young Zeynel meets Ayse, an Anatolian girl from a tiny village, who harbours big dreams. Where he is insecure and pressured to live up to the expectations of other people, she is sure of herself and knows exactly how to achieve what she wants. Perhaps there is more to their meeting than just chance. Twenty-five years later, Ayse is a successful businesswoman, and Zeynel her contented husband. But on a trip one evening, he plays Good Samaritan to a mysterious traveller, who turns out to be his undoing... Forced into unfortunate circumstances he must learn to reconcile himself with his curse and make sacrifices to protect the people he loves, even if that means letting go of the things he holds most dear.