Last Letter from Istanbul
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4.0 • 9 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
*Also look out for Lucy Foley’s Sunday Times bestselling crime debut, THE HUNTING PARTY, available to buy now.*
‘This will sweep you away for the summer. Lucy Foley blends a rich history, haunting secrets and a timeless love story’ Santa Montefiore, Sunday Times bestselling author of The Deverill series
ISTANBUL, 1921
Before the Occupation, Nur’s city was a tapestry of treasures: the Grand Bazaar alive with colour, trinkets and spices; saffron sunsets melting into the black waters of the Bosphorus; the sweet fragrance of the fig trees dancing on the summer breeze . . .
Now the shadow of war hangs over the city, and Nur lives for the protection of a young boy with a terrible secret. Stumbling through the streets, carrying the embroideries that have become her livelihood, she avoids the gazes of the Allied soldiers. Survival is everything.
When Nur chances upon George Monroe, a medical officer in the British Army, it is easy to hate him. Yet the lines between enemy and friend grow fainter.
She and the boy would both be at risk. Nur knows that she cannot afford to fall – impossibly and dangerously – in love . . .
Reviews
‘This will sweep you away for the summer. Lucy Foley blends a rich history, haunting secrets and a timeless love story’ Santa Montefiore, Sunday Times bestselling author of The Deverill series
‘Lucy Foley's gorgeous elegant prose and the way she conjures up post war Constantinople makes this a beautiful, evocative and memorable read’ Lucinda Riley
‘An evocative and sensitively written novel about ill-fated love, sacrifice and the violent effects of war’ S Magazine
About the author
Lucy Foley studied English Literature at Durham and UCL universities. She then worked for several years as a fiction editor in the publishing industry – during which time she wrote her debut novel, The Book of Lost and Found. Lucy now writes full-time. During the year she divides her time between the UK and the Middle East – much of this novel was written in a garden in Tehran! – as well as travelling around the world for research and inspiration . She is currently working on her next book.
Visit her Facebook page at www.facebook.com/LucyFoleyAuthor and follow her on Twitter @lucyfoleytweets
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
From the author: “I had written a completely different book, which was set in Edwardian England. I just wasn’t excited about the setting. And after 30,000 words, I abandoned it. Then I had the idea for this novel, which came to me just by reading about the First World War era. There was this line about Constantinople as it was called then. I’d never heard anything about the occupation of Istanbul. And it was just fascinating. I learnt that there were people posted there for longer than the First World War itself and people posted into citizens’ homes— they were literally taking over a part of someone’s house. I am always writing the book I want to read, and I didn’t feel like I had read this book. I wanted to have a go at telling that story from one perspective. It involved a lot of research, but there isn’t a great deal written about [that time] in English, strangely, other than some quite dry historical factual stuff about it. I ended up going to the Imperial War Museum, where there are incredible, rich archives of letters and diaries and photos that men who were posted there sent back to their families. But I also wanted to get a real idea of the Turkish side things. There’s so much written in Turkish about the occupation and I’ve got some great Turkish friends in Istanbul who helped translate some of it. They had also inherited certain memories from their great-grandparents about that time. It all went wholesale into the book.”
