Check out more Istanbul photos here.
Everybody wants to be in pictures. While we were shooting the author video for Istanbul Passage, we found just a camera tripod was a magnet for people. You can see a few of them in the photos I’ve posted. At first, I thought a matter of curiosity, but it turned out all of them wanted Their pictures taken.
The fisherman at Rumeli Hisari, for instance, kept walking back and forth into the video shot until we asked him if we could take his picture. Broad smile. Fishing pole posed. The group of schoolgirls were less cagey—they just asked us outright, then wanted to see the pics.
The spice seller in the spice market in Eminonu was more worldly—he’d lived in Brooklyn. The boy on Galata Bridge was just keeping warm over the fire. Finally, the two beauties on the ferry are from Kazkhstan. They asked us (in Russian) whether the ferry was going to Uskudar. Turns out the video director had majored in Russian studies (what were the chances?) and could answer them, so they stuck close. Both dressed to the nines, with enough perfume to clog even the stuff breeze blowing down the Bosphorus. They hadn’t yet seen Topkapi or the Blue Mosque or much of anything really except the high end shops in Nisantasi. Were there any good stores in Uskudar? And I thought isn’t this what people were doing hundreds of years ago—coming to Istanbul to shop? The timeless city. Hope you enjoy the pics.
ISTANBUL PASSAGE: A Novel by Joseph Kanon Atria Books, a division of Simon and Schuster | May 29, 2012 From the acclaimed, bestselling author of Stardust, The Good German, and Los Alamos—a gripping tale of an American undercover agent in 1945 Istanbul who descends into the murky cat-and-mouse world of compromise and betrayal that will come to define the entire post-war era. A neutral capital straddling Europe and Asia, Istanbul has spent the war as a magnet for refugees and spies. Even American businessman Leon Bauer has been drawn into this shadow world, doing undercover odd jobs and courier runs for the Allied war effort. Now as the espionage community begins to pack up and an apprehensive city prepares for the grim realities of post-war life, he is given one more assignment, a routine job that goes fatally wrong, plunging him into a tangle of intrigue and moral confusion.
Played out against the bazaars and mosques and faded mansions of this knowing, ancient Ottoman city, Leon’s attempt to save one life leads to a desperate manhunt and a maze of shifting loyalties that threatens his own. How do you do the right thing when there are only bad choices to make? Istanbul Passage is the story of a man swept up in the aftermath of war, an unexpected love affair, and a city as deceptive as the calm surface waters of the Bosphorus that divides it.
Rich with atmosphere and period detail, Joseph Kanon’s latest novel flawlessly blends fact and fiction into a haunting thriller about the dawn of the Cold War, once again proving why Kanon has been hailed as the “heir apparent to Graham Greene” (The Boston Globe).
Praise forJoseph Kanon’s Stardust:
“Spectacular in every way.” —Lee Child
“No one writes period fiction with the same style and suspense—not to mention substance—as Joseph Kanon.” —Scott Turow
Joe Kanon and Jesse Kornbluth were great friends in college. Then they moved to the same city and hadn’t done more than wave across crowded rooms in almost thirty years. But as soon as they sat down for this interview, it was as if they were having coffee after an analysis of a great novel in some college English class. The only difference was that the great novel they were dissecting was Joe’s. Jesse Kornbluth: We all had big plans in college. Were yours to write a novel—or become a publisher?
Joseph Kanon: I had already begun to work in publishing at college as a reader for the Atlantic Monthly. At graduation, I assumed I’d be in publishing, but first I went to England and got a master’s degree in English Literature. And then I came back to New York and had a series of publishing jobs, the way one does. For a long time, I was an editor, but while I was at Dutton, I became Publisher and then President. With that change, I became less editorial and more management.
Kornbluth: You’re good with numbers? You don’t freak out when you see a budget?
Kanon: The secret of all good management is to get a good Chief Financial Officer. So I did. (more)
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