The Dervish House

Book excerpt: Another day, another tram bomb. It seems everyone is after a piece of Turkey. But the shock waves from this random act of twenty-first-century terrorism will ripple far beyond Necatibey Cadessi. Welcome to the world of The Dervish House—the great, ancient, paradoxical city of Istanbul, divided like a human brain, in the great, ancient, equally paradoxical nation of Turkey. With a population pushing one hundred million, and Istanbul alone swollen to fifteen million, Turkey is the largest, most populous, and most diverse nation in the new Europe, but also one of the poorest and most socially divided. It's a boom economy, the sweatshop of Europe, the bazaar of central Asia, the key to the immense gas wealth of Russia and central Asia. The Dervish House is seven days, six characters, and three interconnected story strands all woven around the common core of the old dervish house of Aden Dede. A terror attack, a vision of djinn, a commodities scam, a hunt for half a miniature Koran that holds the key to new technology, and a quest for a creature from Arabic legend—that may not be so legendary after all. Praise for The Dervish House “To read McDonald is to fall in love with a place and to become drunk with it....If you've never read him, you're in for a treat. If you're a fan like me, you'll be delighted anew. What a wonderful, wonderful book.”—Boing Boing "The Dervish House is an audacious look at the shift in the power centers of the world and an intense vision of one possible future." —New York Times “Hugely adventurous and entertaining, sumptuously inventive and full of heart... it is likely to rank as Ian McDonald’s finest creative achievement.” —Locus