Choices - Fiction
Goodwin - The Janissary Tree
 | The Janissary Tree by Jason Goodwin A former Spectator/Sunday Telegraph Young Writer of the Year, Goodwin wrote an encyclopaedic study of the Ottoman Empire in Lords of the Horizon. In his enthusiasm for his subject, he never bludgeoned the reader with his learning, but instead shared it excitedly. And now he does so in fiction. The Janissary Tree puts us in Istanbul, 1836. Steaming tanneries stink of the dog faeces used to tan hides; cramped markets are fat with an Empire's produce; Dervishes whirl for coins; the Imperial Archive bulges with 400 years of bureaucratic reports, but young recruits to the Imperial army, missing from their barracks, are beginning to appear as corpses…… The hero who must solve the mystery has access to every cranny and alley of Istanbul life. He is Yashim, a retired Court eunuch, reserved and dapper in his cashmere cloak, an investigator for the Empire's elite; in effect, a detective. With a passionate interest in cooking and reading, Yashim looks set to endure through the projected series. |
