"This compellingly tender tale sees a Greek septuagenarian inspired to chronicle his politically tapestried life in Turkey in the wake of meeting a young female writer."
Nimbly traversing decades and generations, Defne Suman’s The Last Apartment in Istanbul shares the moving story of a Greek outsider in Istanbul through the twentieth-century, and beyond.
“I gave up on love the year my wife died”, so shares 75-year-old Pericles at the start of his story. Since then, he’s felt adrift from life and from the new century, unable “to bring neither love nor spirit into the present, only grief and longing”. And, though he’s always lived in the same Circle Building apartment, his feelings of dislocation, loneliness and unrest are rising. While times have been a-changing for decades as a result of the gentrification of his area of Istanbul, the coming of COVID is only set to heighten his palpable isolated state.
Into this, Pericles notices a woman several decades his junior coming to view a flat in his building. In a flash, he “realised it was imperative that Leyla move into The Circle. She was the injection of life the building and its residents needed. I heard this like a command in my brain. A clear signal”. After going to extraordinary lengths to ensure she moves in, Pericles learns Leyla is a writer, which leads him to dare to dissect his own past. And so, he charts personal and political rises and falls, ebbs and flows, loves and losses to stirring effect.
Beautifully rich in detail of character and place, and sublime on unexpected connections and moments that incite us to dig deep into our long-buried histories, The Last Apartment in Istanbul is a novel to take your time over, though its smooth pace and layered intrigue invite it to be read in but a handful of immersive sittings.
| Primary Genre | Historical Fiction |
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