One neighborhood in Istanbul: a window on a city, country, region, and world in a state of upheaval.
 
Karagumruk, an Istanbul neighborhood once dominated by Ottoman-era homes, is now known for its cheap apartment blocks and petty thieves—and a massive influx of Syrian refugees. It's here that Suzy Hansen went looking for the truth behind the headlines of the Turkish president Erdogan's authoritarian turn, a catastrophic regional war, and an accelerating geopolitical crisis. She discovered the neighborhood's secrets and got to know its people: Ismail, the longtime muhtar, or neighborhood councilman; Huseyin, a loyalist for Erdogan's Islamic nationalist AK party; and Ebru, a real estate agent and mother with ambitions to unseat Ismail.

From Life Itself is the absorbing account of one neighborhood in Istanbul that has seen profound change. But in a remarkable turn, Hansen connects the events unfolding in Karagumruk to the forces roiling Turkey, the Middle East, and the world. She asks: Was Turkey a harbinger of what we'd soon see in other countries, the resurgence of authoritarianism? Or do the lives of this neighborhood, and the transformations of Erdogan's Turkey, reveal a more complex story?

The author of the acclaimed Pulitzer Prize finalist Notes on a Foreign Country, Hansen explores Turkey's place in the world as no other writer has. From Life Itself is a book for our time—a story for a world out of joint, and for all of us who feel the pressure of the disorienting global forces remaking our lives.
 
Contributor Bio(s)
 
Suzy Hansen lived in Istanbul for more than a decade, where she was a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and many other publications. Her first book, Notes on a Foreign Country, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Nonfiction and the winner of the Overseas Press Club of America’s Cornelius Ryan Award. She has taught writing at Princeton University, New York University, and Bard College.