The Architect's Apprentice

by Elif Shafak

The painter Melchior and the ambassador Busbecq were historical characters who arrived in Istanbul around 1555, but I have fictionalized the moments of their arrival and departure. In several books I have come across allusions to a group of Ottoman architects in Rome, but what exactly they were doing there remains obscure. I imagined them as Sinan’s apprentices, Jahan and Davud. And there really was an elephant named Suleiman in Vienna, whose story has been beautifully narrated by José Saramago in The Elephant’s Journey. Finally, this novel is a product of the imagination. Yet historical events and real people have guided and inspired me. I benefited enormously from a great many sources in English and Turkish, from Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq’s Turkish Letters to Metin And’s Istanbul in the Sixteenth Century: The City, the Palace, Daily Life. ‘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.