Stamboul Sketches: Encounters in Old Istanbul

By John Freely

Throughout the 1960s, John Freely explored the alleys, hidden corners and monuments of Istanbul, in between teaching, to create a legendary guidebook with Hilary Sumner-Boyd But all the passages that were too personal, too capricious, too idiosyncratic, too indulgent of eccentric personalities, too wrapped up in the love of mid-afternoon banter, too indulgent of musicians, dancers, gypsies, dervishes, drunks, beggars, fishermen, poets, fortune-tellers, folk-healers, mimics and prostitutes, were cut from their scholarly guide. Stamboul Sketches is fashioned from these off-cuts, a chronicle of chance encounters inspired by Evliya Çelebi, the Pepys of seventeenth-century Istanbul. It is a beautiful, quirky portrait of a city which, Freely says, 'grabs you by the heart and never lets you go'.

Illustrated with 36 photographs of Istanbul at the time by Sedat Pakay

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1780600569
• ISBN13: 9781780600567
• Release Date: August 2015
• Publisher: Eland Publishing
• Length: 208 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.4" x 8.4"