To the city : life and death along the ancient walls of Istanbul

To the city Life and death along the ancient walls of Istanbul

Alexander Christie-Miller

Book - 2024

In this extraordinary literary debut, Christie-Miller traces the history and present of Istanbul by walking along its crumbling defensive walls and talking to those he passes. Caught between two seas and two continents, with a contested past and an imperiled future, Istanbul represents the precipitous moment civilizations around the world are currently facing. To the City seamlessly blends two narratives: the fragile optimism of the present-day and its inhabitants, and the story of Mehmet's siege and capture of the city in 1453. Those events still loom over the city, as Erdoğan -- a kind of latter-day sultan -- invokes their memory as part of his effort to transform Turkey and resurrect its imperial past. Istanbul stands at the centre... of the most pressing challenges of our time. Environmental decay, rapacious development and a refugee crisis are straining the city to breaking point, while its civil society gutters in the face of resurgent authoritarianism. Yet, Istanbul has endured despite centuries of instability. Christie-Miller introduces us to people who are experiencing the looming crisis and fighting back, sometimes triumphing despite the odds. This is a meditation on the soul of Istanbul, of its resilience and fortitude. In the defensive walls of Turkey's largest and most fabled city, Christie-Miller finds a distillation of the country's history and a mirror of its present. Walk with him and see the danger, beauty and hope.

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Subjects
Istanbul (Turkey) > History.
Published
New York : Pegasus Books 2024.
Language
English
Main Author
Alexander Christie-Miller (author)
Edition
First Pegasus Books cloth edition
Physical Description
xii, 396 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color), maps ; 25 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages [378]-386) and index.
ISBN
9781639367344
9780008416041
  • Note on Turkish Spelling
  • Maps
  • The Marble Tower
  • I. Dreams
  • 1. The Tanners' Gate
  • 2. The Buried Gate
  • 3. The Gate of Saints
  • 4. The Cannon Gate
  • 5. The Gate of the Riven Tower
  • 6. The Golden Gate
  • 7. The Gate of the Dervish Lodge
  • 8. The Gate of Martyrs
  • II. Omens
  • 9. The Prophesied Gate
  • 10. The Cannon Gate
  • 11. The Gate of the Spring
  • 12. The Rebuilt Gate
  • 13. The Crooked Gate
  • 14. The Gate of Plagues
  • 15. The Marble Tower
  • Acknowledgements
  • List of Illustrations
  • Notes
  • Note on the Use of Historical Sources
  • Bibliography
  • Index
Review by Kirkus Book Review

A revelatory exploration of the ancient city's four miles of land walls, which enclose the entire western side of its peninsula. Turkey correspondent for the LondonTimes for six years in the 2010s, Christie-Miller is a knowledgeable and ideal guide to this terrain. Chapters of his sprawling investigation into centuries of Turkish and Ottoman history alternate with passages grounded in contemporary Istanbul and the vibrant if impoverished neighborhoods that surround its crumbling walls, complete with towers still standing, if partly in ruins. These walls were built by the Byzantines as fortifications, protecting their imperial capital from invasions for a millennium. Christie-Miller centers his history on two momentous events: the siege and capture of the city, then named Constantinople, by Ottoman Sultan Mehmet II in 1453, and the precipitous rise to power of Recep Tayyip Erdogan's authoritarian, Islamist-rooted AK Party in 2002. We see how this history has a direct impact on ordinary Turkish citizens: a family turned out of its ancestral home as the urban landscape is razed for residential developments, for example, or a heroin addict whose precarious recovery leads to his work as a counselor in a live-in rehab clinic. We learn how redevelopment projects shut down factories and docks in the former industrial zone on the city's Golden Horn, to be replaced by tourist-friendly cafés and beachfront. A Roma community is displaced by luxury villas. It's a very urban history, appropriate since the city's name comes from the medieval Greek phrasestin polin, "in/at/to the city." Throughout the book, Istanbul's storied past and tumultuous present coexist along miles of the historic walls, now listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Istanbul's city walls become the backdrop to compelling human stories of survival and resistance. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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