The Pera Palace and the birth of modern Istanbul

‘Midnight at the Pera Palace: The Birth of Modern Istanbul' by Charles King (W.W. Norton, 476 pages, $28)

As a crucible of Turkey's modern age, Istanbul was deliberately passed over in favor of Ankara, the capital of the new Turkish Republic declared in 1923. Radio broadcasting, cultural institutions, the most powerful newspapers, and foreign embassies all decamped to the new capital, which went from being a dusty Anatolian backwater to the center of the attempted top-down cultural revolution. That revolution was seen as everything cosmopolitan Istanbul was not: Anti-imperial, past-negating, forward-looking. While the enduring sense of loss gave writers like Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar and Orhan Pamuk a rich literary plow to furrow, the old Ottoman capital contended for years with a feeling of abandonment and decay.

However, as historian Charles King reveals in this very enjoyable book, Istanbul also provides a useful prism to explore Turkey's modern era. King centers his narrative on the Pera Palace, the hotel in the heart of the city's European side opened in 1892. Initiated by the Wagon-Lits company, which was  also behind the Orient Express, the hotel was intended to link to a chain of similar high-end establishments across the rest of the line. The Pera Palace captured the spirit of the age - as intellectual and cultural tastes among the Ottoman elites turned toward Europe and economic ties deepened.

The years leading up to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire were tumultuous in Istanbul. Destitute refugees flooded the streets of the city, while the end of the First World War brought about its occupation by the victorious allies. In line with the times, the Pera Palace was bought in 1919 by the terrifically named Prodromus Bodosakis...