"The Janissary Tree by Jason Goodwin
By Julian Fleming
Published: 18 June 2006
Jason Goodwin's books show an almost intimidating cleverness. A former Spectator/Sunday Telegraph Young Writer of the Year, he wrote encyclopaedic studies of the Ottoman Empire (Lords Of The Horizon), the dollar, (Greenback), and won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for On Foot to the Golden Horn.
But in his non-fiction Goodwin, an an engaging enthusiast, never bludgeons the reader with his learning; he shares it excitedly. And now he does so in fiction."
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