Istanbul Noir

“[In Istanbul Noir] you get blown along the shore of the Bosporus in the wealthy enclave of Bebek (Feryal Tilmac’s “Hitching in the Lodos”), hustled through the shadowy past in the bustling Aksaray (Mustafa Ziyalan’s “Black Palace”), have your mind read in the “haven for lowlifes” that is Siskinbakkal (Algan Sezginturedi’s “Around Here, Somewhere”) and thrown behind bars in Sagmacilar (Yasemin Aydinoglu’s “One Among Us”).-- The Lead Miami Beach

A city at once ancient and modern, Istanbul is the quintessentially postcard-perfect metropolis. But don’t let the alluring vistas fool you. For beneath its veneer as the meeting place of cultures, religions, and ethnicities lies a heart of darkness, seething with suppressed desire, boiling with frustration, and burning with a fervor for vengeance.

Brand-new stories from: Baris Mustecaplioglu, Muge Iplikci, Behcet Celik, Algan Sezginturedi, Ismail Guzelsoy, Hikmet Hukumenoglu, Lydia Lunch, Yasemin Aydinoglu, Riza Kirac, Sadik Yemni, Feryal Tilmac, Mehmet Bilal, Inan Cetin, Mustafa Ziyalan, Jessica Lutz, Tarkan Barlas, and others.

The Akashic Noir Series moves fearlessly to the city hosting the European/Asian divide.

Publishers Weekly

Istanbul straddles the divide of Europe and Asia, and its polyglot population of 12 million seethes with political, religious and sexual tensions, as shown in the 16 stories in this strong entry in Akashic's noir anthology series. Most of the stories are fittingly dark, though a couple are lit by a macabre humor: Hikmet Hukumenoglu's "The Smell of Fish," about a woman's efforts to discourage suitors, and Algan Sezginturedi's "Around Here, Somewhere," about a drug runner's attempted escape. Sadik Yemni's "Burn and Go" delivers a memorable account of a childhood accident's fearsome consequences. A lonely older woman and a polite young man share a ride in Feryal Tilmaç's fateful "Hitching in the Lodos." Most contributors are either natives of Istanbul or longtime residents, and their stories reflect religious extremism (Jessica Lutz's "All Quiet") and governmental repression (editor Ziyalan's "Black Palace") as well as the disaffection common to the genre. This is a welcome complement to the mostly historical mysteries set in Istanbul. (Nov.)

Mustafa Ziyalan was born in Zonguldak, at the Black Sea coast of Turkey. He worked as a general practitioner and coroner in a rural Anatolian village. Now he lives and practices psychiatry in Brooklyn, New York. His poetry, short fiction, and essays have appeared in many literary periodicals, anthologies, and in book form. Amy Spangler was born in Ohio and first landed in Turkey as a high school exchange student in 1994-95. She continued to foster her ties with the country and her keen interest in its literature throughout her college years, promptly moving to Istanbul upon graduation in 1999. She still lives in the elusive and amorphous Istanbul.