num_pages: 144
description: The Irish-American physicist academic and traveler John Freely wrote more than sixty lively books on travel history and science before he died in 2017 aged 90. But It was Istanbul where he emigrated with his family in 1960 to take up a post teaching physics at the American Robert College that turned him into a writer. His first book Strolling Through Istanbul written with his fellow academic Hilary Sumner-Boyd was an instant success when it was published in 1972 and has never been out of print since.With the exception of Ouz 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 Pasaj 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.
language: English
title: Stamboul Ghosts: A Stroll Through Bohemian Istanbul
publisher: Cornucopia Books/Caique Publishing