From Life Itself: Turkey, Istanbul, and a Neighborhood in the Age of Erdogan

"Rich and complex . . . [A] beautifully observant book." —Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times Book Review

“A dizzying tour de force . . . From Life Itself leaves the reader with a sense of wonder.” —Elif Batuman, author of Either/Or and The Idiot

One neighborhood in Istanbul: a window on a city, country, region, and world in a state of upheaval.

Karagümrük, an Istanbul neighborhood once dominated by Ottoman-era homes, is now known for petty thieves, cheap apartment blocks, and an influx of Syrian refugees. It’s here that Suzy Hansen went looking for the truth behind the Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s authoritarian turn, a catastrophic regional war, and an accelerating geopolitical crisis. She asks: Was Turkey a harbinger of what would soon arise in other countries, the resurgence of authoritarianism? Or do the lives in this neighborhood, and the transformations of Erdoğan’s Turkey, reveal a more complex story?

During a decade spent reporting from Karagümrük, Hansen discovered the neighborhood’s secrets and got to know some of its people: Ismail, the longtime muhtar, or neighborhood councilman; Huseyin, a loyalist in Erdoğan’s Islamic nationalist AK Party; and Ebru, a real estate agent and mother with ambitions to unseat Ismail. Through these local perspectives, Hansen connects the events unfolding in Karagümrük to the forces roiling Turkey, the Middle East, and the world, capturing the sweep of the last ten years in microcosm.

From the author of the acclaimed Pulitzer Prize finalist Notes on a Foreign Country, From Life Itself is a story for a world out of joint. An absorbing account of one neighborhood in Istanbul that has seen profound change, it offers lessons for all of us who feel the pressure of the disorienting global forces remaking our lives.