●Turkey's greatest living novelist guides us through the monuments and lost paradises, dilapidated Ottoman villas, back streets and waterways of Istanbul - the city of his birth and the home of his imagination. 'This evocative book succeeds at both its tasks.

●It is one of the most touching childhood memoirs I have read in a very long time; and it makes me yearn - more than any glossy tourist brochure could possibly do - to be once again in Istanbul.' Noel Malcolm
'An irresistibly seductive book, and its seduction lies not in the author's self-portrait, but in his poetical identification with Istanbul . . . His novels have already made him celebrated throughout the world, but perhaps he will be longest remembered for this wistful memorial to the city of his heart.' Jan Morris