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Cities

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If you want to know the time, ask a policeman. If you want to know what makes a city tick, ask a crime-writer.

That’s how NPR – America’s answer to Radio 4 – are taking listeners to fascinating places around the world.

I think it’s a brilliant idea. Crime-writers  do explore their cities. Sometimes they define them – imagine a London without Sherlock Holmes at 221b Baker Street, or Los Angeles without Philip Marlowe. For several minutes, at breakfast-time in the summer holidays, you might hear Donna Leon strolling through Venice,  Robert P. Parker talking about Boston, Laura Lippman on Baltimore. It’s called ‘Crime in the City’ and it airs on Morning Edition.

So last week, while in Istanbul again, I spent a great day tramping the streets with NPR journalist Ivan Watson, visiting places and people I know, linking them to passages from the books.

We went underground, into the cisterns of Byzantine Constantinople. We went onto rooftops, with Istanbul spread below us. I did one reading about muezzins to the sound of the muezzins – and another, about the Spice Bazaar, to the sound of hucksters and shoppers in the Spice Bazaar. We talked about Yashim, and Istanbul, and the passage of history – and at the end of the day we went to a friend’s place and actually cooked imam bayildi the way Yashim might have done it, with an indecent amount of virgin oil.

It tasted delicious.

The segment runs the week of August 11th.

Coming out

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What happens when the book comes out? Exactly. The Bellini Card went on sale this week, and garnered its first reviews: Jeremy Jehu in The Telegraph writes today that ‘a pervading sense of loss and decline suffuse these rich romps with melancholy intelligence.’ 

I like the Literary Review’s angle, too, not least because The Bellini Card takes us to Venice – and Venice is notoriously hard to tackle. After all, everyone’s written about the place, from Dickens to Casanova, from Henry James to Jan Morris. 

‘Goodwin’s prevous books took us into the alleys and byways of nineteenth century Istanbul. This is an equally vivid and well-informed account of Venice in 1840 .. the plot is lively and interesting: but the real delight in this book is the atmospheric portrait of a fascinating place.’ 

In the meantime I get a call about putting the stories on screen. Hmm, why not?

Then again, who plays Yashim?

Cadence: the authorial voice

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Faber are about to release the first Yashim story, The Janissary Tree, as an audiobook – which makes this quite a Summer along with the paperback edition of The Snake Stone and The Bellini Card itself.

Today I got the discs – a sneak preview.

The reader is Andrew Sachs, and he is brilliant. His voice is precise, quiet, companionable. He carries the book, delivering drama in surges – and for speech he does more than create accents. He makes characters.

I’m fascinated by the way he can suggest a woman’s voice, while using his own.

And now, for the first time, Yashim speaks!

Wheels in Motion I

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The Bellini Card is at the printers in the UK. A fortnight ago, bound proofs arrived – looking very stylish. The cover was actually a black-and-white version of the glorious Technicolor cover that Faber have designed, but it looked terrific – and a lot sexier than the old plain pale blue covers which bound proofs used to have. Either way, it’s always rather exciting to have your book as a book. It reads differently, and I don’t know exactly why.

I’ve been to plenty of houses which have no books. I’ve met people who chuck books after they’ve read them, or give them away. I write this, and over the rim of my screen I can see at least a thousand books stacked in shelves, in no especial order. I could take you next door and show you several thousands more.

Now and then, Kate and I go through some of the shelves with a burning urge to get rid of at least a few ill-natured books we don’t like, books we’ll never read, really stupid books.

We last singled out – four.

Singled them out, forgot, and now, I think, they’re back in the shelves, or in a pile somewhere on the floor.

The truth is that every book tells a story. Sometimes wittingly,  sometimes – well, it’s a cover. A period of history. A memory. Or a hope – that someday something is going to sneak up and surprise you.

In the last two weeks: a book of photographs of the Ypres Salient, in World War I: photos of then, and now. Carnage, mud, a blasted tree, dead horses. The same view, in the 1970s: one of those calm French avenues of trees, with a 2CV motoring carelessly past sown fields.

A novel by John Cooper Powys called Wolf Solent, which I took on the plane to Istanbul and back (and my sister’s name scribbled in the front – how did that get here?).

Julia Pardoe’s Beauties of the Bosphorus – a recent treasure. Wonderful engravings of 1830s Istanbul, which you can also view at: www.htl-steyr.ac.at/~holz/pardoe/text_plate/001misspa.html

And The Bellini Card, in bound proof, slipping out of a Jiffy bag.

Eating the Ottoman Empire

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I’ve been accused of trying to have it both ways by making Yashim, my Ottoman sleuth, a terrific cook. After all, on current strength, if he ever lost his knack as an investigator he could probably get a job as a TV chef. He’s smart, he’s organic – it’s the 1840s, after all – and he cooks the kind of eastern Mediterranean food that makes Moro, say, so successful.
What’s more, barring the occasional interruption, his repertoire of Ottoman recipes can be followed the reader.
And he’s not the only cooking detective on the block, either.
That said, Yashim’s cooking is very far from cynical.
Firstly, its a character trait: he’s a eunuch, so cooking is something sensual. Secondly, it’s a practical device: a detective needs thinking-time, and something to do while he’s thinking, so cookery is perfect.
Thirdly, most importantly, I’m writing about a distinct time and place, for a food-literate audience. In each book I’m trying to evoke the wider culture of the Levantine world, as it developed under Ottoman rule. Of course, I relish the twisting intrigue of the plot, but the cooking is ideal for evoking Istanbul’s gentler side, its multi-ethnic character, its devotion to the arts of peace and pleasure. Ottoman civilization had its rawer points, politically, but at a social level it was always a place in which good food and fellowship could flourish over a glass of raki and a table of delicious mezze, a world of marriage feasts and holidays and everyday good dishes, inspired by – and inspiring – a palace cuisine which ranks with the great cookery of China and France.
None of us, I guess, will ever solve a murder in the harem, but we can all discover how to make lamb’s liver the way the Albanians do, or imam bayildi, or a gypsy salad.
Food parcels from another world….

Getting it wrong

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The other day I wrote about the importance of getting it right. 

 

You’re also free, I think, to get it wrong – even in a historical novel. Different writers have different thresholds, of course, but even the strictest acknowledge that when it comes to fiction it’s the story that really counts. Joan Aiken wrote a terrific series of historical novels for children, set in an 18th century England where the House of Stuart still reigned: she got it wrong, but it felt absolutely right. What’s important is consistency.

In the Yashim stories I wouldn’t go that far. It is 1836, or 1840, and the sultan is the sultan. Venice is under Austrian occupation. You could buy champagne in Pera, on the shores of the Golden Horn. Gentile Bellini was, indeed, invited to Istanbul in 1479, where he painted a portrait of sultan Mehmed II. These, to me, are the Big Facts. There are lots more, and half the fun is weaving one’s imagination around them.

So one of my favourite characters is the validé, the sultan’s mother, whose astonishing story – from French ingénue to harem queen – is brilliantly recounted in Leslie Blanche’s The Wilder Shores of Love. She is Yashim’s friend in the palace. He appreciates her dry cynicism; she relishes his lurid tales from the City; and they share a fondness for Parisian novels.

But in truth, her presence in the harem is a matter of historical speculation, not certified fact, so no-one can say for sure whether she became the mother of Sultan Mahmud II. Either way, Mahmud’s mother was certainly dead by 1818: you can visit her tomb in Istanbul.

In The Bellini Card, set in 1840, she puts Yashim on the right track. She is very old; she is also very clever.

I wouldn’t lose her for the world. 

Getting It Right

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Nothing breaks the mood like a duff note – a glaring anachronism, a remark made in inappropriate slang, or the moment when your character’s eyes change mysteriously from blue to brown.

On the other hand, it’s important not to get too bogged down in verifying details when you’re writing. After all, it’s the story that counts, isn’t it?

Copy editing – which we’re doing now with The Bellini Card – is the proper time to address those niggles.

Is the name of the street spelled correctly? Do baby artichokes come into market before the asparagus?

Last week I even asked a fencing master round for tea, and we discussed the swordplay I’d written for the Contessa. It has been years since I fenced – sabre, not foil – but it turned out I’d got it almost right, except for calling octave optime; and he had a nice riff for me about a beat to the blade…

So The Bellini Card even has a fight co-ordinator!

On the question of slang,  I gave some minor characters in The Janissary Tree Cockney accents. I wanted to show that they were working men and women who’d grown up on the city streets: Istanbul, of course, not London. I think it was the right choice – I’m writing in English, after all. Decide for yourself, maybe.

I just checked with a friend whether women were able to work as calligraphers in the Ottoman Empire, transcribing the Koran.  

My answer arrived by email: a beautiful Hilya – a calligraphic portrayal of the Prophet – by an 18th century woman calligrapher,  Esma Ibret.