I had heard a lot of good things about Elif Shafak, and my first experience of her writing confirmed that she is a proper wizard with words, atmosphere and settings. “The Architect’s Apprentice” took me on a journey through 16th century Istanbul, a bustling, cosmopolitan city where many worlds seem to intersect. I had visited that place with Pamuk’s “My Name is Red” (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...), but I hadn’t been crazy about that trip. Shafak, however, completely seduced me with Ja...

THIS BOOK WAS SO FREAKING GOOD!! I DIDN'T HESITATE NOT EVEN FOR A MOMENT WHEN I DECIDED TO GIVE IT 5 STARS THIS IS MY FAVORITE READ OF THE YEAR. THIS WAS A JUST A MAGICAL READ THAT CONTAINED EVERYTHING I WISH FOR IN A BOOKTHERE IS ZERO FLAW IN THIS BOOK!!!!! ZERO PEOPLE so now that I've calmed. the story follows the life of an Indian boy named Jahan who escapes, with an elephant, his abusive stepfather to Istanbul. Jahan was many things but mostly he was a Mahout first and Architect second. in a...

The Architect's Apprentice is based on the real life person Mimar Sinan, the most famous architect of the Ottoman era. The story is told through the point of view of his apprentice, the fictitious character Jahan. Sinan's work has been compared to the genius work of Italian architect and engineer Michelangelo. In 1540 12 year old Jahan arrives in Istanbul from India with a gift for the Sultan Suleiman,(aka Suleiman the Magnificent), a white elephant named Chota. Like several of her other novel...

The Architect's Apprentice is the latest historical novel by Turkish author Elif Shafak The author said that that a 1559 painting of Sultan Sulieman standing, an elephant in the background was the inspiration of the novel. The story goes as the indian boy Jahan sneaks into a ship that traveled to istanbul to deliver an "elephant" a gift from the Maharaja to the Sultan. Then he became the tamer of the elephant at the Sultan's Palace. The elephant then joins the chief Ottoman Architect Sinan, to t...

First, let's bask in the beauty of the cover: Quite a sight, isn't it?Anyway, this book reminded me a lot of The Golem and the Jinni (tGatJ). They are both historical fictions that take place in cosmopolitan cities told through the eyes of immigrants. In this case an Indian elephant trainer, Jahan, arriving in Ottoman Istanbul with a gift for Suleiman the Magnificent from a foreign Shah. We see the fascinating world of 16th and early 17th century Istanbul through his eyes as Jahan is taken under...

"May the world flow like water," Sinan used to say. I can only hope that this story, too, will flow like water in the hearts of its readers. -- Elif Shafak about "The Architect's Apprentice"That was the last phrase in the author's note, and for that & for many other reasons I gave it that rating!The novel is huge (452 pages), to keep reading such a lengthy work you need it to be flawless ..this novel definitely lacks that style! While the characters are well-illustrated, it lacks the thrill to p...

“They should all be sound asleep at so late an hour -- the humans, the animals, the djinn. In the city of seven hills, other than the watchmen on the streets making their rounds, only two kinds of people would be awake now: those who were praying and those who were sinning.” A magnificently epic story about a man’s life from beginning to end: living in ancient Istanbul, a witness of the Ottoman rising to its glorious and bloody height as well as the beginning of its downfall. We follow Jahan

‘no one told us that love was the hardest craft to master.’ this book has been sitting on my shelf for years. i have avoided picking it up because how dense it is. but after deciding i had neglected it for far too long, i realised that reading this is a labour of love. this book takes time and effort and patience. just as the architects apprentice put in the work to build the many mosques of istanbul brick by brick, so too must the reader invest in his story page by page. only then can you ap

Wow, how to best describe his book?!This book is special. It has: -stunning writing that stretches how you see the world around you. It gets you thinking in new ways, comparing Eastern versus Western modes of reasoning. -exciting events. I thought the book was going to end and then realized there were three hours left. There was much more to what had happened than I had realized! I came to understand I needed to know much more. -the feel, it captures the atmosphere, of Istanbul in the 1500s. A w...

I cannot even begin to express how absolutely beautiful this book is. Everything, from the writing to the historical background, is so sublimely put to paper, it touches the reader so many times, that this has become one of those works for which I find myself incapable of conjuring enough words of praise. I have cried two times during the story, which says a lot about how delicately it tugs at your heartstrings making beauty out of every ugly feeling that it touches. I wish I could retain every

Wow! I haven't read such wonderfully detailed and realistic historical fiction in a pretty long time. The Architect's Apprentice follows the story of Jahan, a young boy from India who sets out to escape his stepfather and seek his fortune. He ends up in Istanbul and falls in love - with an elephant, a princess, an architect, and a city. The narrative flows along delightfully from one story to another, one character to the other. The relationships ebb and flow as Jahan finds one adventure after a...

I saw this novel reviewed pretty glowingly, in the New York Times. I love historical fiction and I haven't read much on 16th Century Istanbul, so I was excited to give it a try. I started to read and was immediately captivated by the introduction, where Jahan (our Architect's Apprentice) has witnessed the disposal of a number of bodies at the palace where he lives and works. There were hints at a great love that went unfulfilled...yay! There was the idea that this man had risen from being an ele...