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alundeberg 's review for:
Midnight at the Pera Palace: The Birth of Modern Istanbul
by Charles King
For the longest time I have felt that Paris, with it revolutions and rebuilding, is the most interesting city in the world. But if I cast my sight east, I land on Istanbul, a city that makes Paris looks like child's play. While Paris might straddle the Seine, Istanbul straddles two continents. Despite its revolving door of governments and being razed and reimagined by Napoleon III, Paris has always been decidedly French. Istanbul, in contrast, has a long history of Romans, Greeks, Jews, and Muslims and was under Ottoman rule that collectively managed this hodgepodge of cultures for hundreds of years. Turkey's one great revolution at the hands of Mustafa Kemal irrevocably altered the demographics and way of life for everyone-- mostly to devastating effects as it resulted in genocide, ethnic cleansing, and forced relocation.
This shift from empire to nation state is brilliantly recounted in Charles King's "Midnight at the Pera Palace: The Birth of Modern Istanbul". In a deft 378 pages, King explains the death of the Ottoman Empire and how Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk) raised forces against Western occupiers to create a new, modern nation. To bring the country out of the past and into the present, everything was overhauled from changing the calendar, providing equal rights to women, and a forced homogenization of the population. At the center of this historical narrative is the Pera Palace Hotel, built in the late 19th century and home to political intrigue in the first half of the 20th. In a combination of social and political history, King draws upon a wide range of research to make this an informative, entertaining, and at times, heartbreaking, read of a nation that completely reimagines itself and the city at the heart of it all.
This shift from empire to nation state is brilliantly recounted in Charles King's "Midnight at the Pera Palace: The Birth of Modern Istanbul". In a deft 378 pages, King explains the death of the Ottoman Empire and how Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk) raised forces against Western occupiers to create a new, modern nation. To bring the country out of the past and into the present, everything was overhauled from changing the calendar, providing equal rights to women, and a forced homogenization of the population. At the center of this historical narrative is the Pera Palace Hotel, built in the late 19th century and home to political intrigue in the first half of the 20th. In a combination of social and political history, King draws upon a wide range of research to make this an informative, entertaining, and at times, heartbreaking, read of a nation that completely reimagines itself and the city at the heart of it all.