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FICTION Selçuk Altun. The Sultan of Byzantium. Clifford Endres & Selhan Endres, tr. London. Telegram. 2012. isbn 978- 1846591488
Selçuk Altun's sixth novel, The Sultan of Byzantium, positions itself as a skillfully constructed tribute to Byz- antium, attracting attention with its "provocative title." The novel offers a concise and captivating histori- cal journey to the Byzantine world while putting Istanbul, a city whose intercultural and historical charm is uncontested, at the center of the story. Istanbul contains "a row of Byzantine, Ottoman, and Republi- can buildings shoulder to shoulder, resisting time and humanity and apparently issuing a challenge," one that is both encapsulated within and more extensive than our protago- nist's quest.
The hero of the novel, Halâs, who is a bibliophile and a poetry lover, is a half-American,...