Halide's Gift Paperback - 2002

First line

On the upper floor of the harem the blinds were drawn against the afternoon sun and the cavernous rooms were silent.

Excerpt

Sitting in the Senior Library, Halide went over the facts in her mind. She shuffled the truths and arranged them piece by piece, so that they balanced like locum on the great brass scales at Haci Bekir's sweet shop. Here was the Sultan, God's representative on earth. Her father, grandparents, and their grandparents before them were an integral part of the Imperial order. Here were the guardians of Eyoub and beneath them the chief coffee makers, sweet makers, and rabbit dancers. It had always been this way, forever.

Media reviews

“A complex tale of intrigue, secrets, superstitions and veiled passions. Frances Kazan has turned unknown history into compelling human drama.”
—Susan Vreeland, author of Girl in Hyacinth Blue

“Enchanting . . . Frances Kazan has taken Halide Edib’s true story—her amazing moment in Turkey’s history—and with an alchemy of art and scholarship has turned it into the kind of fiction that illuminates a world.”
—Jane Kramer

“Engrossing . . . Most of Halide’s story takes place in the harem, where it engages themes of love, marriage and betrayal. . . . Kazan’s descriptions of turn-of-the-century Constantinople are haunting.”
—The Washington Post

“A wonderfully foreign, fascinating world . . . [Halide] was a woman who defied convention.”
—The Denver Post

“I was gripped by Frances Kazan’s evocation of the last days of the Ottoman empire in Halide’s Gift. That strange, fragile world of complex intrigues and compromises is made fully present through her scrupulous attention to individual lives and psychological truth. An impressive novel.”
—Pankaj Mishra, author of The Romantics