Turkish delight
Veenu Sandhu / New Delhi August 30, 2011, 0:00 IST
It’s 1839. The Ottoman Empire founded some 600 years ago is on the decline. Greece, Austria and Russia have plucked away major chunks of it. Egypt, too, is lost. One of the most powerful empires in the Mediterranean is in a state of flux. It’s at this dramatic time in Turkish history that Yashim, the detective, returns with another mystery to unravel.
Yashim is anything but a stereotypical detective. He’s probably the only such character who is a eunuch – one popular enough to merit a series. Writer-historian Jason Goodwin’s An Evil Eye is the fourth book centred on the Turkish eunuch detective. The first Yashim novel, The Janissary Tree, which won the Edgar Award for Best Novel in 2007, was followed by The Snake Stone and The Bellini Card.
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