Description

From a Turkish author who hasbeen in contrast to Borges, Nabokov, and DeLillo comes a stunning novel that's at the same time a fascinating work of historical fiction and a sinuous treatise about the enigma of identity and the relations between East and West. In the 17th-century, a Italian student sailing from Venice to Naples is taken captive and sent to Constantinople. There he drops in to the custody of the student referred to as Hoja--"grasp"--a guy who's his exact double. In the decades that follow, his master is instructed by the slave in Developed engineering and science, from medication to pyrotechnics.