My friend Tom Brosnahan's Turkey:
Bright Sun, Strong Tea memoir was a great non fiction read.
I've yet to read his novel, Istanbul Love Bus, but I plan to get it for the plane for my next 12-hour flight to Istanbul.
Here's the intro blurb for Tom's book:
It’s 1968
and the world is on fire, with war in Vietnam and riots in the Western world,
but Istanbul seems peaceful: Turks go about their lives while carefree hippies
smoke dope, make love, and set out on a hilarious journey toward Kathmandu in a
VW van—the Love Bus.
A student traveler and a US Peace Corps Volunteer fall in
and out of love, and ask a Sufi mystic to show them their future.
Hidden from
view, a gorgeous Scandinavian hired to manage a nightclub discovers she is captive
in a drug lord’s harem as the mafia and government agents fight a fierce
clandestine battle over opium, and Soviet spies carry out their mission to
detonate a US atom bomb beneath Turkey’s most iconic mosque.
The story is about
to go nuclear...
