The Oracle of Stamboul

A Novel

By: Michael David Lukas

Narrated by: Mozhan Marno

Length: 7 hrs and 42 mins

Publisher's summary

An elegantly crafted, utterly enchanting debut novel set in a mystical, exotic world, in which a gifted young girl charms a sultan and changes the course of an empire's history.

Late in the summer of 1877, a flock of purple-and-white hoopoes suddenly appears over the town of Constanta on the Black Sea, and Eleonora Cohen is ushered into the world by a mysterious pair of Tartar midwives who arrive just minutes before her birth. "They had read the signs, they said: a sea of horses, a conference of birds, the North Star in alignment with the moon. It was a prophecy that their last king had given on his deathwatch." But joy is mixed with tragedy, for Eleonora's mother dies soon after the birth.

Raised by her doting father, Yakob, a carpet merchant, and her stern, resentful stepmother, Ruxandra, Eleonora spends her early years daydreaming and doing housework—until the moment she teaches herself to read, and her father recognizes that she is an extraordinarily gifted child, a prodigy.

When Yakob sets off by boat for Stamboul on business, eight-year-old Eleonora, unable to bear the separation, stows away in one of his trunks. On the shores of the Bosporus, in the house of her father's business partner, Moncef Bey, a new life awaits. Books, backgammon, beautiful dresses and shoes, markets swarming with color and life—the imperial capital overflows with elegance, and mystery. For in the narrow streets of Stamboul—a city at the crossroads of the world—intrigue and gossip are currency, and people are not always what they seem. Eleonora's tutor, an American minister and educator, may be a spy. The kindly though elusive Moncef Bey has a past history of secret societies and political maneuvering. And what is to be made of the eccentric, charming Sultan Abdulhamid II himself, beleaguered by friend and foe alike as his unwieldy, multiethnic empire crumbles?

©2011 Michael David Lukas (P)2011 HarperCollins Publishers

A Haunting Story

The story of Eleanora Cohen unfolds as if one has come upon a ball of silvery yarn and lets it unfurl, following it as one is led through a precocious child’s mind and the paths of a magnificent exotic city. Mysterious birds appear and vanish leaving the reader/listener with more questions than answers. The author’s writing flows as beautifully as the Bosphorus.

Okay, Not Fabulous

Would you try another book from Michael David Lukas and/or Mozhan Marno?

I probably would not try another book by this author. I read it because it was a book club pick, but did not enjoy it really. I wasn't crazy about the narrator either; her voice was a little sharp.

Would you recommend The Oracle of Stamboul to your friends? Why or why not?

No, would not. It was fairly well written, but I was bored by it. It should have been much more interesting, given the subject matter.

If this book were a movie would you go see it?

That would depend on who the director and actors were.

A great book

I enjoyed this fiction historical novel. Authentic characters. Stamboul and its colors come to life.
Excellent narrator.

Lots of atmosphere

I've read that this story of a child prodigy is a true, or true-ish, story, which may explain why, as beautifully written as it is, it never actually goes anywhere. The prodigy appears, and then she disappears. Since the author has invented an entire variant of a hoopoe, he could have gone a little further and invented some plot resolution. As it is, our heroine appears to be in some danger, or in the power of a potentially dangerous person, but then she isn't after all, and then she decides to take herself out of the story. It was a little like eating cotton candy: sweet and irresistable and utterly ephemeral.