“Ayşe has always admired the Ottoman talent for euphemism. The Auspicious Event was the massacre and execution of ten thousand Janissaries. Bodies had been heaped in the Hippodrome, rotting in the June heat. The more perfumed the language, the more… — Ian McDonald Copy Share Image
“Najia can feel yts subdermal activators against her forearm. Not man not woman not both not neither. Nute. Another way of being human, speaking… — Ian McDonald Copy Share Image
“Is this a Kurdish thing?’ ‘What?’ ‘Being deliberately contradictory?” — Ian McDonald Copy Share Image
“And how did you find the East?’ ‘It’s a shit-hole. But it’s our shit-hole.” — Ian McDonald Copy Share Image
“A joyful task,’ he says and she realizes that he welcomes the idea of years of searching, tile by tile, inscription by inscription, cornice… — Ian McDonald Copy Share Image
“It's the superhero problem . . . .Superpowers make everything personal. Batman versus Joker. Fantastic Four versus Galactus. The Big G might be the… — Ian McDonald Copy Share Image
“Water splashes and runs in a film across the glass floor suspended above the mosaics. The Hacı Kadın hamam is a typical post-Union fusion… — Ian McDonald Copy Share Image
“Marcelina loved that miniscule, precise moment when the needle entered her face. It was silver; it was pure. It was the violence that healed,… — Ian McDonald Copy Share Image
“If there is one thing will kill Turkey,’ she would say, ‘it is a famine of ideas.’ No one in her coterie dared mention… — Ian McDonald Copy Share Image
“In our five thousand years of civilization, our history has often been the handmaid of geography. We lie exactly midway between the North Pole… — Ian McDonald Copy Share Image
“I do rather like birds,’ Abdullah Unul says. ‘They’re busy, active little things. They make do. Have you ever thought, if Istanbul were to… — Ian McDonald Copy Share Image
“The army doctor who had patched up his hands and examined him after the rescue at Kayişdaği told him a story about the Mevlana,… — Ian McDonald Copy Share Image
