Seven Houses

Book excerpt: "An exotic and beautiful story" (Isabel Allende) chronicling the lives of four generations of remarkable women, sweeping readers from the last days of the Ottoman monarchy to Turkey's transformation into a republic and the present day backlash. "A highly imaginitive family saga...Croutier's measured prose is artistic and sensuous" (San Francisco Chronicle) as the story of a silkmaking family iss told through the houses they occupied. From a grand villa in Smyrna in the early twentieth century to a silk plantation in the foothills of Mount Olympus, from a tiny house in a sleepy town to an apartment in a modern urban high-rise, the family's dwellings reflect its fortune's rise and fall. As communal baths and odalisques give way to movies and cell phones, four unique yet powerfully linked women experience all of life's hardships and pleasures.