---
product_id: 5996333
title: "Midnight at the Pera Palace: The Birth of Modern Istanbul"
brand: "w. w. norton & company"
price: "₨1458"
currency: SCR
in_stock: true
reviews_count: 5
category: "Book"
url: https://www.desertcart.sc/products/5996333-midnight-at-the-pera-palace-the-birth-of-modern-istanbul
store_origin: SC
region: Seychelles
---

# Midnight at the Pera Palace: The Birth of Modern Istanbul

**Brand:** w. w. norton & company
**Price:** ₨1458
**Availability:** ✅ In Stock

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- **What is this?** Midnight at the Pera Palace: The Birth of Modern Istanbul by w. w. norton & company
- **How much does it cost?** ₨1458 with free shipping
- **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship
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## Description

Review
        	
        	
        		
        		
	        		
						
			        		&#x201C;King has combed out the threads of this complex and highly nuanced story in a hugely enjoyable, magnificently researched and deeply absorbing book.&#x201D; - Jason Goodwin, New York Times Book Review&#x201C;Superb&#x2015;deliciously dense with detail and sheer narrative force as Charles King tells the twentieth-century history of the Near East through the prism of one great city. A sepia-toned classic!&#x201D; - Robert D. Kaplan, author of The Revenge of Geography and Eastward to Tartary&#x201C;Popular history at its best, authoritative and hugely entertaining. Few places were as colorful as Istanbul between the wars and Professor King captures all the chaotic brio and contradictions of a city, and a culture, reinventing itself.&#x201D; - Joseph Kanon, author of Istanbul Passage&#x201C;In this memorably distilled history, Charles King tells us just what the Pera Palace was&#x2015;the ornately decaying hotel crouched at the center of a mare&#x2019;s nest of intrigue, violence, sex, and espionage, all set against the slow dimming of Ottoman magnificence. I loved this book.&#x201D; - Simon Winchester, author of Krakatoa and The Map that Changed the World&#x201C;This social history of one of the world&#x2019;s most fascinating cities is as illuminating as it is entertaining. Characters from Trotsky to Hemingway, from a blind Armenian musician to a future pope, help tell the story of how Istanbul transformed itself from a refugee-clogged backwater into a vibrant metropolis. Midnight at the Pera Palace is a true Turkish delight.&#x201D; - Stephen Kinzer, author of Crescent and Star: Turkey Between Two Worlds and Reset&#x201C;A diverse cast, ranging from Muslim beauty queens and Georgian royalty to Leon Trotsky, have left their mark on Istanbul, and King nimbly weaves their threads with enough color to draw in general readers and enough detail to satisfy specialists.&#x201D; - Publishers Weekly&#x201C;Elegant&#x2026; multiple biographies unfold against the backdrop of an old city&#x2019;s growing pains.&#x201D; - Kate Tuttle, Boston Globe&#x201C;An engaging, detailed look at the old city that became the newest of them all.&#x201D; - Melissa Davis, Seattle Times&#x201C;Fascinating and perceptive.&#x201D; - Randy Dotinga, Christian Science Monitor
						    	
					    	
						
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        		About the Author
        	
        	
        		
        		
	        		
						
			        		Charles King is a professor of international affairs and government at Georgetown University. A frequent media commentator on global issues, he is the author of Gods of the Upper Air, Odessa, Midnight in the Pera Palace, and other books. He lives in Washington, DC.
						    	
					    	
						
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## Images

![Midnight at the Pera Palace: The Birth of Modern Istanbul - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51YGBHPcNdL.jpg)
![Midnight at the Pera Palace: The Birth of Modern Istanbul - Image 2](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41KkRWvbdSL.jpg)

## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    Can one give an Oscar to a book?
  

*by P***R on January 7, 2015*









  
  
    Having lived in Turkey for extended periods and having stayed at the Pera Palace more than once, I approached the book without much thought about discovering anything new. I was wrong. This is a brilliantly written account of the conversion of the Ottoman Empire into the modern republic of Turkey using the hotel as a touchstone illustration for the changes that came about. At the time it was built - when the first railway line reached Istanbul in the mid 1800s - there were many more Greeks, Europeans, Armenians, and others in Istanbul than there were actual Turks. The Empire ruled by the millet (now usually translated "state") system by which each ethnic group administered justice to its own "people," and they in turn felt no shared national identity with each other or with the Turks (a term then applied mostly to Anatolian peasants). By the time you reach the last page, you have a clear idea of the growth of the nation, the role of Turkey (and Istanbul in particular) as a haven for those fleeing their own countries (most of a chapter on Trotsky's refuge in the Princes' Islands), and later as an escape route for East European Jews fleeing Nazi extermination programs. (The later Pope Paul XXIII's role as Papal legate had a big role here.) All in all, one of the most informative and gripping books I've read in years!
  


### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    thoroughly-researched
  

*by H***R on June 26, 2018*









  
  
    i'm giving this five stars because it is a text that's been constructed carefully, powered by a great deal of research. but i can't go without mentioning the author's tacit bias. there is an insidious (maybe completely unconscious, on the author's part, i don't know!) sort of belittlement...these judgements passed on muslims, on the turks...what i would consider to be hurtful acts of microaggression. as a turkish american reader, each snide word-choice stung me. i felt it all. there were moments i had to take a break, to physically take a break, put the book down, to try and let go of the hurt.another reviewer, downthread, explains it like so: "If you already think the Turks are murderous, lecherous, drunken Islamo-fascists, then you will love this book...(the author) writes about the Turks destroying their beautiful things, killing each other, being afraid of minorities, and not practicing 'real' Islam...He sounds like an old southern man talking about African Americans in a place where African Americans are the majority but he's rooting for the couple thousand people of any other race who happen to be there."five stars for the research, the writing. zero for the lack of heart, balance...for the strangely bigoted *white-man-racist* take on istanbul and the turkish people.
  


### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    Istanbul's Grand Hotel
  

*by W***Y on March 2, 2016*









  
  
    An engrossing, anecdote-filled account of events that occurred primarily in Istanbul in the period immediately after WWI and through WWII. I became fascinated by the Ottoman Empire due to Jason Goodwin's  highly readable "Lords of the Horizons" and this book fills in the story of the demise of that empire and the building of what has become the Republic of Turkey.King centers his stories around the legendary Pera Palace Hotel, perhaps best known through Agatha Christie's "Murder on the Orient Express." There are parallels between the fortunes of that famed hotel and the conditions prevailing in Istanbul in the period covered in this volume.  Turkish revolutionaries, Allied generals, ambassadors and spies of all nations crisscrossed the lobby and rooms of the Pera Palace.For those curious about what happened to the "sick man of Europe," and how the Allies subdivided the Ottoman Empire's former territories in the Near East, this is a good place to start---and subsequently ponder the consequences.
  


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*Product available on Desertcart Seychelles*
*Store origin: SC*
*Last updated: 2026-02-06*