A concubine is strangled in the Sultan's palace harem, and a young cadet is found butchered in the streets of Istanbul. Delving deep into the city's crooked alleyways, and deeper still into its tumultuous past, the eunuch Yashim discovers that some people will go to any lengths to preserve the traditions of the Ottoman Empire.
Brilliantly evoking Istanbul in the 1830s, The Janissary Tree is a bloody, witty and fast-paced literary thriller with a spectacular cast.
Jason Goodwin is the Edgar Award-winning author of the Investigator Yashim series. The first five books-The Janissary Tree, The Snake Stone, The Bellini Card, An Evil Eye and The Baklava Club-have been published to international acclaim, alongside Yashim Cooks Istanbul, a cookbook of Ottoman Turkish recipes inspired by the series. Goodwin studied Byzantine history at Cambridge and is the author of Lords of the Horizons: A History of the Ottoman Empire, among other award-winning nonfiction. He lives with his wife and children in England.