The Oracle of Stamboul: A Novel (P.S.) - Softcover

Lukas, Michael David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 006201210X ISBN 13: 9780062012104

Publisher: Harper Perennial, 2011

Synopsis

Set in the heart of the exotic Ottoman Empire during the first years of its chaotic decline, Michael David Lukas' elegantly crafted, utterly enchanting debut novel follows a gifted young girl who dares to charm a sultan--and change the course of history, for the empire and the world. An enthralling literary adventure, perfect for readers entranced by the mixture of historical fiction and magical realism in Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass, Orhan Pamuk's My Name is Red, or Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, Lukas' evocative tale of prophesy, intrigue, and courage unfolds with the subtlety of a Turkish mosaic and the powerful majesty of an epic for the ages.

About this title

About the Author

MICHAEL DAVID LUKAS has been a Fulbright scholar in Turkey, a late-shift proofreader in Tel Aviv and a Rotary scholar in Tunisia. He is a graduate of Brown University and the University of Maryland, and his writing has been published in the Virginia Quarterly Review, Slate, National Geographic Traveler and the Georgia Review. Lukas lives in Oakland, California, less than a mile from where he was born. When he isn't writing, he teaches creative writing to third- and fourth-graders. Visit him online at www.michaeldavidlukas.com.

From the Back Cover

Ushered into the world by a mysterious pair of Tartar midwives late in the summer of 1877 in the town of Constanta on the Black Sea, Eleonora Cohen proves herself an extraordinarily gifted child--a prodigy--at a very young age. When she is eight years old, she stows away aboard a ship, following her carpet merchant father, Yakob, to the teeming and colorful imperial capital of Stamboul where a new life awaits her.

In the narrow streets of this city at the crossroads of the world, intrigue and gossip are currency, and people are not always what they seem. But it is only when she charms the eccentric Sultan Abdulhamid II--beleaguered by friend and foe as his unwieldy realm crumbles--that Eleonora will change the course of an empire.

Edition details

• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Publication date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 006201210X
• ISBN 13: 9780062012104
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320