From Life Itself : Turkey, Istanbul, and a Neighborhood in the Age of Erdoğan

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

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

'Intimate and revealing' MOHSIN HAMID

One neighbourhood in Istanbul: a window on a city, country, region and world in a state of upheaval.

Karagumruk, an Istanbul neighbourhood once dominated by Ottoman-era homes, is now known for its cheap apartment blocks and petty thieves--and a massive influx of Syrian refugees. It's here that Suzy Hansen went looking for the truth behind the

headlines of the Turkish president Erdogan's authoritarian turn, a catastrophic regional war, and an accelerating geopolitical crisis. She discovered the neighbourhood's secrets and got to know its people: Ismail, the longtime councilman; Huseyin, the Erdogan

loyalist and political rival and Ebru, a real estate agent and mother with higher ambitions.

From Life Itself is the absorbing account of one neighborhood in Istanbul that has seen profound change, but that mirrors the authoritarian forces roiling elsewhere in the Middle East, Europe and the world. She asks: was Turkey a harbinger of what we'd

soon see in the west? At what point did a country's destruction actually begin? And once it had, could it be stopped?