Stamboul Ghosts

With the exception of Oğuz, so thin that he was known as The Ghost because he barely cast a shadow, everyone in John Freely's rumbustious memoir, including the author himself, is larger than life. Bohemian Istanbul was a haven for myriad misfits who found their feet in the city. Clamorous, glamorous, eccentric, cosmopolitan and frequently outrageous, they included the 'berserker' Peter Pfeiffer, a resourceful exile with three passports; Aliye Berger, the beautiful queen of bohemian Pera; the writer James Baldwin; and, fleetingly, the future Pope John XXIII.

This elegy for a lost world encapsulates the flavor of their daily life and nightly excesses. Well lubricated with lemon vodka and Hill Cocktails served by Sumner-Boyd's gloomy housekeeper, Monik Depressive, the Freely crowd weave their way from the Galatasaray fish market and the taverns of CiCek Pasajı to the Russian restaurant Rejans, and frequently on to the Freely household on the Bosphorus hills, where a party will soon be in full swing and eggnog flowing freely. Stamboul Ghosts is illustrated with Ara Guler's poignant black-and-white photographs, which make of Freely's beloved city an evocative stage-set.