From Life Itself

Turkey and Istanbul in the Age of Erdogan

By: Suzy Hansen

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Paperback | 7 May 2026

At a Glance

Paperback
368 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
19.6 x 12.8 x 2.5

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'A gripping portrait of a crisis-ridden Turkey' PANKAJ MISHRA

'A dizzying tour de force that leaves the reader with a sense of wonder' ELIF BATUMAN

'Intimate and revealing' MOHSIN HAMID

Pulitzer finalist Suzy Hansen chronicles the age of authoritarianism in Turkey - through an intimate portrait of its peopleIn the midst of a world in upheaval, Erdogan has remade Turkey in his own image.
Once a shining portal that straddled East and West, Istanbul's streets now teem with nationalistic fervour, political repression and rampant corruption. And it's here, in the old Ottoman neighbourhood of Karagumruk, that Suzy Hansen goes looking for the truth about modern Turkey.
Through the lives of its inhabitants, Hansen shows how local conflicts are spiralling into regional crises, deepening the fault lines now fracturing Europe and the Middle East.

A dazzling account of a nation on the frontlines of history, From Life Itself chronicles the rise of an autocrat, the resurrection of an empire - and the human stories unfolding in its shadow.

Struggling to make sense of the sweeping changes that have transformed Turkey in the past decade under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan - a frenzy of construction, war in the Kurdish region, an influx of refugees and, especially, a sharp autocratic turn - Hansen, who has long lived in the country, homes in on residents in a single Istanbul neighbourhood to create a richly textured human history â THE NEW YORK TIMES

Continuously elegant and intellectually conscientious, From Life Itself sets a new standard in literary journalism. Its portrait of a crisis-ridden Turkey is gripping in itself. However, Suzy Hansen is able to diagnose a global unravelling by abandoning the assumptions and expectations of Western journalism that posited a clear division between 'us' and 'them,' achievers and stragglers. While ostensibly writing about a 'foreign' society, she bracingly enables us to understand our own -- PANKAJ MISHRA, author of THE WORLD AFTER GAZA and BLAND FANATICS

The Sufis tell us of two paths to enlightenment: to look inside oneself and find the universe, or to look out at the universe and find oneself. Here Hansen is doing both: in her intimate examination of one neighbourhood of one city of one country that is not her own, she reveals to us the swirling patterns of our entire world -- MOHSIN HAMID, author of EXIT WEST

In From Life Itself, Suzy Hansen does something extraordinary: she plants herself in a single Istanbul neighbourhood for a decade and watches democracy unravel-this is journalism at its most courageous and intimate. The frontline of history is right outside your door-this book shows you how to see it. -- MARIA RESSA, Nobel Peace Prize-winning journalist

No modern history of Turkey, told through the complex lives and perspectives of its inhabitants, could be more compelling than Suzy Hansen's. In it, she traces not only a nation in all of its specificity, but also the essential elements of the rise of autocracy -- ELIZA GRISWOLD, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of CIRCLE OF HOPE

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