El silencio de Sherezade

On a September evening in 1905, a baby girl is born to a mother dazed by opium in the ancient city of Izmir. At that very moment, a handsome Indian spy arrives at the port on a secret mission for the British Empire. He navigates amidst spires and gilded minarets, the scent of figs and sycamores, and the cries of street vendors hawking their wares. When he leaves Izmir seventeen years later, he will do so terrified by the thick smell of kerosene and smoke as flames devour the city and its inhabitants until their complete destruction. Much will have happened between his arrival and his departure. Births, deaths, romances, and grief are yet to come as these once peaceful and cosmopolitan streets are used as a bargaining chip in the aftermath of the First World War and the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. Told through the intertwined destinies of a Levantine family, a Greek family, a Turkish family, and an Armenian family, this unforgettable novel reveals a city and a culture now lost to time. And these characters still have much to tell us, for as Scheherazade says, "When I rose from the ashes of the lost city, they called me Scheherazade. Although a century has passed since my birth, my life, condemned to one hundred years of silence, has not yet ended. Though my tongue is mute, I will tell all."