The Lion House by Christopher de Bellaigue

Christopher de Bellaigue has a magic talent for writing history. It is as if
we are there as the era of Suleyman the Magnificent unfolds." - Orhan
Pamuk, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature
Narrated through the eyes of the intimates of Suleyman the Magnificent, the
sixteenth-century sultan of the Ottoman Empire, The Lion House animates
with stunning immediacy the fears and stratagems of those brought into orbit
around him: the Greek slave who becomes his Grand Vizier, the Venetian
jewel dealer who acts as his go-between, the Russian consort who becomes
his most beloved wife.
Within a decade and a half, Suleyman held dominion over twenty-five million
souls, from Baghdad to the walls of Vienna, and with the help of his brilliant
pirate commander, Barbarossa, placed more Christians than ever before or
since under Muslim rule. And yet the real drama takes place in close-up: in
small rooms and whispered conversations, behind the curtain of power, where
the sultan sleeps head-to-toe with his best friend and eats from wooden
spoons with his baby boy.
In The Lion House, Christopher de Bellaigue tells the story not just of rival
superpowers in an existential duel, nor of one of the most consequential lives
in human history, but of what it means to live in a time when a few men get to
decide the fate of the world.
Sweeping. . . [An] appetite for detail gives the (...)
Author Bio
Christopher de Bellaigue is the award-winning author of five books,
including The Islamic Enlightenment, which was short-listed for the Baillie
Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction in 2017 and the Orwell Prize for Political Writing
in 2018. As a reporter in the 1990s and 2000s, he covered politics and
invasions in Turkey, the Middle East, and South Asia forThe Economist, The
Guardian, and The New York Review of Books, among other publications. He
has also made television and radio programs and has lectured at universities
and in boardrooms around the world.

Picador
On Sale: Nov 7/23
5.38 x 8.25 • 304 pages
2 Maps / Notes, Bibliography, Index
9781250872487 • $25.00 • pb
History / Middle East / Turkey & Ottoman Empire