$41.49
Author: Bellaigue Christopher de
Number Of Pages: 304
Details: About the Author
Christopher de Bellaigue is a historian, linguist, and multidisciplinary writer and journalist with expertise in Islamic worlds. He read Iranian and Indian studies at Cambridge University and then spent twelve years reporting from South Asia and the Middle East. His writing has appeared in The Economist, The Guardian,and The New York Review of Books. He has reported from Kabul on the invasion of Afghanistan for the London Review of Books and lectured in Tehran (in Farsi) on the work of Orhan Pamuk. He is the award-winning author of several books, including The Islamic Enlightenment, which was short-listed for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction and the Orwell Prize for Political Writing. He has also made several television and radio programs for the BBC.
Product Description
“Christopher de Bellaigue has a magic talent for writing history. It is as if we are there as the era of Suleyman the Magnificent unfolds.” ―Orhan Pamuk, Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature
Narrated through the eyes of the intimates of Suleyman the Magnificent, the sixteenth-century sultan of the Ottoman Empire, The Lion House animates with stunning immediacy the fears and stratagems of those brought into orbit around him: the Greek slave who becomes his Grand Vizier, the Venetian jewel dealer who acts as his go-between, the Russian consort who becomes his most beloved wife.
Within a decade and a half, Suleyman held dominion over twenty-five million souls, from Baghdad to the walls of Vienna, and with the help of his brilliant pirate commander Barbarossa placed more Christians than ever before or since under Muslim rule. And yet the real drama takes place in close-up: in small rooms and whispered conversations, behind the curtain of power, where the sultan sleeps head to toe with his best friend and eats from wooden spoons with his baby boy.
In The Lion House, Christopher de Bellaigue tells not just the story of rival superpowers in an existential duel, nor of one of the most consequential lives in human history, but of what it means to live in a time when a few men get to decide the fate of the world.
Review
“Sweeping . . . [An] appetite for detail gives the book its vividness and energy . . . While The Lion House unfolds like a novel, through scenes rich with authenticating detail and even a sprinkling of dialogue, the extensive notes suggest that at least in its presentation of the major facts his narrative is true to the historical record.”
―Marcel Theroux, New York Times Book Review
“Exquisite . . . So arresting is this book, so enveloping in the tensions of its narrative, that most readers will feel a pang of sorrow that the tale does not run on. The Lion House leaves us with a tease, or taunt: ‘Who, apart from God, can say what will come next?’ A sequel, surely. Although it was the peak of the Ottoman Empire, Suleyman’s reign also offers clear glimpses of a great decline to come. Who better to tell us about it than Mr. de Bellaigue?” ―Tunku Varadarajan, The Wall Street Journal
“A vivid, cinematic account of the rise of Suleyman the Magnificent . . . De Bellaigue follows with exhilarating clarity and suspense the era’s broader battles across Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East, and the individual trajectories―grand ambitions, rivalries, betrayals―of these outsiders in Suleyman’s court, a place rife with intrigue and back-stabbing, rich with colorful characters.”
―Claire Messud, Harper’s
“An eloquent historical investigation of a legendary ruler . . . A vivid, you-are-there re-creation of time and place.”
―Kirkus Reviews
“Wolf Hall for the Ottoman Empire . . . History at its most gripping . . . A gripping story told with intelligence, knowledge and verve.”
―Daily Telegraph
“Those lucky readers who come to Christopher de Bellaigue’s book in proximity to reading Mantel can suddenly have a new panel thrown open to them like an unfolding altarpiece . . . all written in the present tense. This creates the obvio
Release Date: 08-11-2022
Package Dimensions: 30x234x472
