Istanbul Gathering

Istanbul Gathering tells the story of a circle of friends in the heady expatriate scene of 1960s and 70s Istanbul. Protagonist Andrew Malone has returned after an absence of twenty years to see his ex-wife and old friends. The narrative follows them over the course of a single day as they reflect on their lives and on the history of the city before meeting for a reunion dinner.

This vividly detailed revisionist history exposes the underworld of the largest metropolis of the early modern Mediterranean and through it the entire fabric of a complex, multicultural society. Fariba Zarinebaf maps the history of crime and punishment in Istanbul over more than one hundred years, considering transgressions such as riots, prostitution, theft, and murder and at the same time tracing how the state controlled and punished its unruly population. Taking us through the city's streets, workshops, and houses, she gives voice to ordinary people—the man accused of stealing, the woman accused of prostitution, and the vagabond expelled from the city. She finds that Istanbul in this period remains mischaracterized—in part by the sensational and exotic accounts of European travelers who portrayed it as the embodiment of Ottoman decline, rife with decadence, sin, and disease. Linking the history of crime and punishment to the dramatic political, economic, and social transformations that occurred in the eighteenth century, Zarinebaf finds in fact that Istanbul had much more in common with other emerging modern cities in Europe, and even in America.

Istanbul, through the mind of its most celebrated writer ** PRE-ORDER NIGHTS OF PLAGUE, THE NEW NOVEL FROM ORHAN PAMUK ** Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature 'A declaration of love.' Sunday Times 'A fascinating read for anyone who has even the slightest acquaintance with this fabled bridge between east and west.' The Economist 'An irresistibly seductive book' Jan Morris, Guardian In a surprising and original blend of personal memoir and cultural history, Turkey's most celebrated novelist, Orhan Pamuk, explores his home of more than fifty years. What begins as a portrait of the artist as a young man becomes a shimmering evocation, by turns intimate and panoramic, of one of the world's greatest cities. Beginning in the family apartment building where he was born, and still lives, Pamuk uses his family secrets to show how they were typical of their time and place. He then guides us through Istanbul's monuments and lost paradises, dilapidated Ottoman villas, back streets and waterways, and introduces us to the city's writers, artists and murderers. Like Joyce's Dublin and Borges' Buenos Aires, Pamuk's Istanbul is a triumphant encounter of place and sensibility, beautifully written and immensely moving.

This book asks what ‘transnationalism’ might mean for Cultural Studies as an intellectual project shaped in vastly differing circumstances across the world. With contributions from scholars with experience of cultural life and the work of education in various regions, countries and locales - from francophone Africa, Eastern Europe and the Middle East to Hawaii, Jamaica, South Korea and Japan - Cultural Studies of Transnationalism ranges across literary, film, dance, theatrical and translation studies to explore the socially material and institutional factors that not only shape transnational developments in culture broadly understood, but also frame the academic and professional spaces in which we reflect on these. This book was originally published as a special issue of the journal Cultural Studies.

'Cynthia Enloe is a force to be reckoned with and utterly tireless. Her work has long spanned intersectional analyses of gender, race and class...she repeatedly questions which things society pays attention to and which we consider insignificant. She is an inspiration.' Laura Bates 'A triumph' Chatham House Twelve Feminist Lessons of War draws on sharp insights of women as survivors, activists and scholars from Ukraine to Sudan and Myanmar to show how diverse women's experiences of war must be taken seriously if we are to prevent and shorten wars and make gender justice central to recovering from wars. Women's wars are not men's wars. Wartime shapes the gendered politics of marriage, prostitution, journalism, economics, childcare, domestic violence and rape. Enloe's razor-sharp analysis highlights how understanding this can prevent wars and even end them. With fresh, fierce and vital thinking, she shows that by paying more attention to the wounded and the women who care for them, we will be more realistic about the long 'post-war'; and that by listening to feminists on the ground, in Ukraine and elsewhere, we will better understand what is happening to our world. Cynthia is one of only 100 women named on the Gender Justice Wall in The Hague.

Presents a comprehensive A-to-Z reference to the empire that once encompassed large parts of the modern-day Middle East, North Africa, and southeastern Europe.

“Timely . . . brilliant . . . hugely enjoyable, magnificently researched and deeply absorbing.”—Jason Goodwin, New York Times Book Review At midnight, December 31, 1925, citizens of the newly proclaimed Turkish Republic celebrated the New Year. For the first time ever, they had agreed to use a nationally unified calendar and clock. Yet in Istanbul—an ancient crossroads and Turkey's largest city—people were looking toward an uncertain future. Never purely Turkish, Istanbul was home to generations of Greeks, Armenians, and Jews, as well as Muslims. It welcomed White Russian nobles ousted by the Russian Revolution, Bolshevik assassins on the trail of the exiled Leon Trotsky, German professors, British diplomats, and American entrepreneurs—a multicultural panoply of performers and poets, do-gooders and ne’er-do-wells. During the Second World War, thousands of Jews fleeing occupied Europe found passage through Istanbul, some with the help of the future Pope John XXIII. At the Pera Palace, Istanbul's most luxurious hotel, so many spies mingled in the lobby that the manager posted a sign asking them to relinquish their seats to paying guests. In beguiling prose and rich character portraits, Charles King brings to life a remarkable era when a storied city stumbled into the modern world and reshaped the meaning of cosmopolitanism.

Aceh has become best known in our times for its twin disasters—the worst earthquake and tsunami of modern times in December 2004, and a long-running separatist conflict that rent Indonesia for most of its independent history. Although this book emerged from the process of recovery from those traumas, it turns the spotlight on a more positive and neglected claim Aceh has on our attention, as the Southeast Asian maritime state that most successfully and creatively maintained its independent place in the world until 1874. Like Burma, Siam and Vietnam, all better protected by geography, Aceh has its own story to tell of a unique culture struggling for survival through the European colonial era.