For fans of Madame Bovary, Bridgerton, and Madonna in a Fur Coat: a beloved Turkish novel—the most famous in Ottoman literature—about the romantic intrigues of a young woman who wins the heart of a handsome older man living in the biggest palace on Istanbul’s stunning Bosphorus waterfront, now in English for the first time and with a foreword by New Yorker writer Merve Emre
A Penguin Classic
When it comes time to marry, there is no better match for the fashionable young Bihter than the handsome widower Adnan Bey: He’s rich, he lives in the largest house on the Bosphorus, and he makes her manipulative mother inordinately jealous. Yet Bihter’s successful marriage plot does not mean that all is perfect in her new home. Her stepdaughter makes herself Bihter’s rival, and her husband’s nephew ignites in her an irresistible desire. A tale of seduction, love, betrayal, and a society torn between tradition and the allure of the West, The House on the Bosphorus (also known as Forbidden Love, the literal translation of its Turkish title, Aşk-ı Memnu) takes its place in the English canon alongside Madame Bovary, Anna Karenina, and The Age of Innocence with this sensitive and elegant translation.
