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

Suzy Hansen

'A richly textured human history' THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOKS TO READ THIS APRIL

'An ambitious, alive and lovingly written portrait of everyday life' GUARDIAN BOOK OF THE DAY

'A gripping portrait of a crisis-ridden Turkey' PANKAJ MISHRA

Pulitzer finalist Suzy Hansen chronicles the age of authoritarianism in Turkey - through an intimate portrait of its people

In the midst of a world in upheaval, Erdogan has remade Turkey in his own image. Once a shining portal that straddled East and West, Istanbul's streets now teem with nationalistic fervour, political repression and rampant corruption. And it's here, in the old Ottoman neighbourhood of Karagumruk, that Suzy Hansen goes looking for the truth about modern Turkey.

Through the lives of its inhabitants, Hansen shows how local conflicts are spiralling into regional crises, deepening the fault lines now fracturing Europe and the Middle East. A dazzling account of a nation on the frontlines of history, From Life Itself chronicles the rise of an autocrat, the resurrection of an empire - and the human stories unfolding in its shadow.

'A dizzying tour de force that leaves the reader with a sense of wonder' ELIF BATUMAN

Suzy Hansen

Suzy Hansen lived for more than a decade in Istanbul, where she was a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine. Her first book, Notes on a Foreign Country, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Nonfiction and the winner of the Overseas Press Club of America's Cornelius Ryan Award.

Her writing has appeared in many publications including The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The Observer and New York Magazine. In 2007, she was awarded a two year fellowship from the Institute of Current World Affairs to live in and write about Turkey.

Hansen taught writing in Bard College's Globalization and International Affairs program for four years. In 2019, she was a Practitioner-in-Residence at New York University's Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies, and in the spring of 2020, she was a a Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton University. Hansen was an ASU Future Security Fellow at New America from 2019-2020. She lives in New York.

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

Suzy Hansen

Suzy Hansen

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