Heralded as the Turkish Ulysses, A Mind at Peace is a lyrical tribute to the beautiful city of Istanbul, set on the eve of WWII. Tanpinar memorably captures the anxieties of a cosmopolitan Istanbul family during the early years of the Turkish Republic, founded on the ashes of the Ottoman Empire in 1923. Both a historical novel and a love story, it addresses issues of language, music, tradition, politics and modernity and has received Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk's highest compliment as 'the greatest novel ever written about Istanbul'.