"Murray is the best kind of literary biographer" – The Financial Times.
For more information about the books of Nicholas Murray
click HERE and access his website
Winner of the 2015 Basil Bunting Award for poetry

Thursday 13 September 2007

Constantinople

My Aegean journey which begins in Athens will end in Istanbul, that amazing city which was captured as it was in 1874 in a brilliant verbal painting by the Italian writer Edmondo de Amicis in his Constantinople (1877). In that old cliche he makes Istanbul "come alive" in all its multicultural, teeming sprawl. It reminds you that a good travel book is far more vivid and present than the sort of loose, baggy TV travelogue that sometimes seems to have become its successor.

The book, translated in 2005 by Stephen Parkin, is published by the estimable Hesperus classics press which comes up with so many good things.

2 comments:

Ellie said...

Hello Nicholas, and thanks ever so much for the kind words. I'm so glad you enjoyed the book. Can't beat a spot of armchair travelling!

Best wishes,
Ellie Robins, Hesperus Press

Andrew said...

Looks a very elegant production.