Ottoman Odyssey: Travels through a Lost Empire

"My mother’s family were Austrian Jewish bankers and did a lot of business with the Ottoman Empire. For this reason, both my mother and my grandmother were born in Istanbul. Of course in those days it was still called Constantinople—city of Constantine and to me, a city of dreams. Just before getting married, I found boxes of stuff in my parents’ house, and in the early days of married life, I’d spend hours looking at photos and poring over letters and accounts of life in this multicultural city in the last days of the Sultan and the first decades of the Turkish Republic under Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. In this book, journalist Alev Scott is banned from Turkey and takes a wonderful journey through the lands of the Ottoman Empire instead. It’s the multinational aspect of it I find so fascinating and she visits 12 countries on her travels. It’s a gentle read, and you can dip in and out of it. I love reading passages in it after a stressful day. I was first introduced to Stoicism when I interviewed Emrys Westacott, a philosopher at Alfred University, about ‘philosophy and everyday living.’ I was fascinated by the book he recommended, William Irvine’s A Guide to the Good Life , and I subsequently really enjoyed Massimo Pigliucci’s How to be a Stoic , which came out in 2017, as well. I don’t think Stoicism is the right philosophy for me, but I still find it a very interesting reflection on—and approach to—life’s challenges. But, back to primary sources, it wasn’t till I came across this book that I read some Epictetus, the freed slave who was one of the early proponents of Stoicism (note: as with Socrates, what survives are words recorded by one of his pupils rather than his own writings). Like the Loeb Classical Library, this edition, part of a Princeton University Press series that also includes other Classical authors, has the ancient Greek on the left hand page and a modern translation on the right which, if you’ve studied ancient Greek, is a bonus. This book actually is dynamite. I started reading it because our philosophy editor, Nigel Warburton , chose it as one of the best philosophy books of 2018 and I couldn’t put it down. Sue Prideaux is a biographer, not a philosopher, which is probably why it’s a nice way into Nietzsche for me, a non-philosopher. And Nietzsche is one of those people I felt I needed to know more about. I went into the book suspecting him of being a proto-Nazi and came out ( following my conversation with Nigel as well ) convinced he’s a proto-existentialist. One nice feature of the book is that Sue Prideaux has collected all Nietzsche’s wonderful aphorisms at the back, so you too can turn to people and say, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” I’m a big fan of Alex Rosenberg’s previous book, An Atheist’s Guide to Reality: Enjoying Life Without Illusions , and I can’t resist adding this book to my list not because I necessarily agree with its premise, but because it made me laugh and it made me think. As the saying goes, those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it, but as Rosenberg points out, even those who do remember it (e.g. military strategists who do nothing but study military history) make the same mistakes over and over and over again. What is the purpose of studying history, then? What are the lessons of history? This is a really great book for reflecting on those kinds of questions. Some of Rosenberg’s criticisms are spot on but if, like me, you’re a fan of history, it’s also quite fun to read just because it made me want to rise indignantly to history’s defence. Wishing you a very happy holiday from all of us here at Five Books! —Sophie Roell"