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The Last Apartment in Istanbul
I was writing to her, so that she would know me not as this old person whose joints creaked when he rose from a chair, but as the real Pericles: the man who dreamt, deceived, envied, loved…
Pericles Drakos has lived in the exquisite Circle Building for all of his seventy-five years. From its lofty windows, he has seen his little corner of Istanbul shift and transform. But as the area has become increasingly gentrified, Pericles has retreated into its shadowy corners. And when the pandemic hits, his isolation deepens.
But when Leyla, a sparky and beautiful thirty-something moves in, Pericles is enthralled. And when he discovers Leyla is a writer, he decides to put his own pen to paper and record his own fraught history: that of a Greek man subjected to the politics of oppression and intimidation in twentieth-century Turkey.
About the translator
Betsy Göksel was born in a small town in South Carolina in 1940. After graduating from Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Georgia, by chance she began teaching English at The American College for Girls in Istanbul, Turkey, in 1962. She married a Turkish engineer and continued teaching English at the school, which merged with Robert College in 1971, for the next 35 years, while raising three daughters. In 1997 she returned to her native country to oversee the birth of her grandchildren, the passing of her parents’ generation, then returned to her adopted homeland in 2008. She lives now on the Aegean island of Bozcaada with her dogs and spends her days translating fiction from Turkish to English, writing, reading, and walking with the dogs over the shores, dunes and fields of the island. Her translations include The Hate Trap by Haluk Şahin as well as several books on art and architecture for the Istanbul Municipality.
