The Oracle of Stamboul
by Michael David Lukas
List Price: $13.99
Pages: 320
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9780062012104
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Late in the summer of 1877, a flock of purple-and-white hoopoes suddenly appears over the town of Constanta on the Black Sea, and Eleonora Cohen is ushered into the world by a mysterious pair of Tartar midwives who arrive just minutes before her birth. "They had read the signs, they said: a sea of horses, a conference of birds, the North Star in alignment with the moon. It was a prophecy that their last king had given on his deathwatch." But joy is mixed with tragedy, for Eleonora's mother dies soon after the birth.
Raised by her doting father, Yakob, a carpet merchant, and her stern, resentful stepmother, Ruxandra, Eleonora spends her early years daydreaming and doing housework --- until the moment she teaches herself to read, and her father recognizes that she is an extraordinarily gifted child, a prodigy.
When Yakob sets off by boat for Stamboul on business, 8-year-old Eleonora, unable to bear the separation, stows away in one of his trunks. On the shores of the Bosporus, in the house of her father's business partner, Moncef Bey, a new life awaits. Books, backgammon, beautiful dresses and shoes, markets swarming with color and life --- the imperial capital overflows with elegance, and mystery. For in the narrow streets of Stamboul --- a city at the crossroads of the world --- intrigue and gossip are currency, and people are not always what they seem. Eleonora's tutor, an American minister and educator, may be a spy. The kindly though elusive Moncef Bey has a past history of secret societies and political maneuvering. And what is to be made of the eccentric, charming Sultan Abdulhamid II himself, beleaguered by friend and foe alike as his unwieldy, multiethnic empire crumbles?
The Oracle of Stamboul is a marvelously evocative, magical historical novel that will transport readers to another time and place --- romantic, exotic, yet remarkably similar to our own.
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"A lyrical debut…A passionate novel that beautifully conveys the flavor of Turkish culture…focusing on the effect a young prodigy has on the political leaders of the time."
— Kirkus Reviews
"An enchanting, gorgeous read…Lukas captures the scents and sounds, the vivid beauty, the subtle intrigue and simultaneous naivety, of the Ottoman Empire unaware of its imminent demise."
— Siobhan Fallon, author of You Know When the Men Are Gone
"A stunning debut…Lukas has managed to create an instant classic that feels as if it should be retroactively slipped into the great libraries of the old world."
— Reif Larsen, author of The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet
"This first novel by a promising young writer is both vivid historical fiction and a haunting fable."
— Library Journal
