Following the success of The Light of Paris, The Light of New York, and The Light of Tokyo, lensman Jean-Michel Berts turns his masterful eye to the ancient city of Istanbul. This exotic destination is revealed in Berts's otherworldly black-and-white photographs, taken at dawn, when the deserted streets and waterways are wrapped in a mystery all their own. The city's renowned landmarks and hidden corners are captured as never before, framed by Berts's camera obscura. With an evocative text by Alessandra Ricci, The Light of Istanbul is a spectacular volume on this enchanting city.

“Istanbul, Istanbul turns on the tension between the confines of a prison cell and the vastness of the imagination; between the vulnerable borders of the body and the unassailable depths of the mind. This is a harrowing, riveting novel, as unforgettable as it is inescapable.” —Dale Peck, author of Visions and Revisions “A wrenching love poem to Istanbul told between torture sessions by four prisoners in their cell beneath the city. An ode to pain in which Dostoevsky meets The Decameron.” —John Ralston Saul, author of On Equilibrium; former president, PEN International “Istanbul is a city of a million cells, and every cell is an Istanbul unto itself.” Below the ancient streets of Istanbul, four prisoners—Demirtay the student, the doctor, Kamo the barber, and Uncle Küheylan—sit, awaiting their turn at the hands of their wardens. When they are not subject to unimaginable violence, the condemned tell one another stories about the city, shaded with love and humor, to pass the time. Quiet laughter is the prisoners’ balm, delivered through parables and riddles. Gradually, the underground narrative turns into a narrative of the above-ground. Initially centered around people, the book comes to focus on the city itself. And we discover there is as much suffering and hope in the Istanbul above ground as there is in the cells underground. Despite its apparently bleak setting, this novel—translated into seventeen languages—is about creation, compassion, and the ultimate triumph of the imagination.

Cleave has taken a very personal view of the glorious and diverse former capital of the Byzantine and Ottoman empires that is today Turkey’s most modern and largest city. Istanbul: City of Two Continents is divided into three parts: "The Historic Heart of Istanbul"; "Across the Golden Horn: Beyoğlu and beyond"; and "The Other Side: Istanbul in Asia." It includes photographs of the Süleymaniye mosque taken from a helicopter, the Grand Bazaar, the Osmanlı Bank Museum, various consulate buildings, the district of Şişli with its skyscrapers, the shopping mall Kanyon, Beylerbeyi Palace, the Atik Valide Mosque, Laleli fountain, shoe shiners and many other depictions of life and buildings in the city.

First published in 2005. Long acknowledged to be the 'best travel guide to Istanbul' (Times of London) this classic of travel literature is now available in a larger format in hardback binding. The work is both a useful and informative guide to the city with major useful monuments described in detail in terms of the history and architecture. Although the main emphasis of the book is on the Byzantine and Ottoman Antiquities, the city is not treated as a museum in the context of a living city. Itineraries are arranged so that each one takes the visitor to a different part of Istanbul.

From the Nobel Prize winner and acclaimed author of My Name is Red comes a portrait of Istanbul by its foremost writer, revealing the melancholy that comes of living amid the ruins of a lost empire. "Delightful, profound, marvelously origina.... Pamuk tells the story of the city through the eyes of memory." —The Washington Post Book World A shimmering evocation, by turns intimate and panoramic, of one of the world’s great cities, by its foremost writer. Orhan Pamuk was born in Istanbul and still lives in the family apartment building where his mother first held him in her arms. His portrait of his city is thus also a self-portrait, refracted by memory and the melancholy—or hüzün—that all Istanbullus share. With cinematic fluidity, Pamuk moves from his glamorous, unhappy parents to the gorgeous, decrepit mansions overlooking the Bosphorus; from the dawning of his self-consciousness to the writers and painters—both Turkish and foreign—who would shape his consciousness of his city. Like Joyce’s Dublin and Borges’ Buenos Aires, Pamuk’s Istanbul is a triumphant encounter of place and sensibility, beautifully written and immensely moving.

The streetscapes of Istanbul as photographed by Nobel prize-winning novelist Orhan Pamuk in an exquisitely printed clothbound edition The dominant color in Orhan Pamuk's new book of photographs is orange. When the Nobel-Prize-winning novelist is finished with the day's writing, he takes his camera and wanders through Istanbul's various neighborhoods, visiting the backstreets of his town, areas without tourists, spaces that seem neglected and forgotten, spaces with a particular light. This is the orange light of Istanbul's windows and streetlamps that Pamuk knows so well from his childhood--from the Istanbul of 50 years ago, as he mentions in his introduction. But Pamuk also observes that the homely, cosy orange light is slowly being replaced by a new, bright and icy white light from new lightbulbs. His photographs from the backstreets of Istanbul record and preserve the cosy effect of this old, disappearing orange light, as well as the recognition of this new white vision. Whether reflected in well-trodden snow, concentrated as a glaring ball atop a lamppost or subtly present as a diffuse haze, orange literally and aesthetically gives shape to Pamuk's pictures, which reveal to us the unseen corners of his home city.

Buried deep under Istanbul, a secret is about to resurface with explosive consequences...