Customer Reviews

Seraglio: A Novel

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Judging from the reviews for this book here on amazon.com, my expectations for this book weren't very high. However, last week I needed something to read and got this book from my library, not expecting a wonderful read but at least something to get me through the next few days or weeks. Was I wrong.
Seraglio is an excellent book. The story centers on Aimee du Buc de Rivery, a refined young lady on her way home to Martinique from France whose ship is plundered by pirates. The thirteen-year-old fair beauty is presented to the bey of Algiers, who presents Aimee to the Ottoman sultan. Refined and educated in the ways of the Western world Aimee is renamed Nakshidil and enters her golden prison. The Seraglio. At first, Aimee is stubborn and refuses to follow the rhythms and rules that operate the harem, a world within itself. However, she soon learns that if she behaves that way longer, she will meet a horrible fate. And so Nakshidil sets out to be educated in the ways of the harem and Islam, mastering the many forms of dance and seduction and how to please the sultan both sexually and through cooking and charm. The narrator of the story is Nakshidil's closest friend, the black eunuch, Tulip. Eventually, Nakshidil is called to the sultan's bed but soon enough, the sultan is dead and Nakshidil must set out for the Old Palace, a miserable palace set-aside for the harem girls after their sultan dies and a new sultan moves in with his own harem. Nakshidil believes her career is over but the new sultan, Selim III, is enthralled and enchanted with Nakshidil's French ways, her French ideas, and her French cooking. Instead of bedding Nakshidil, the two converse for hours on end each night about Western ideas. However, the idea of Western ideas entering the Ottoman Empire strikes fear into the hearts of many of the Turkish people, endangering both Selim and Nakshidil. And so the story unfolds, an epic of danger, deceit, murder, and a glitzy and extravagant life showered in satin and jewels. I enjoyed reading Tulip's account of his closest friend and the only harem girl who showed him compassion, Nakshidil.
There were some glitches in the plot. Sometimes the huge gaps were puzzling, sometimes years at a time were skipped over which meant we lost that much of Nakshidil's life. Sometimes characters arrived and disappeared quickly and often characters could be confused do to their infrequent mentioning and their titles they were known by. Their were other little things, such as Nakshidil corresponding with her cousin, Rose de Beauharnais (the later Josephine Bonaparte), which probably would not have happened but it lended to the plot of the story and depicted a more sneaky and secretive side of Nakshidil.
But overall, the story was wonderful. You really did feel for the characters. You can't help but feel sad at the point of Peretsu's shocking and barbaric death or hate the despicable Aysha, Nakshidil's lifetime rival in the harem. You feel for the characters and their losses and loves and emotions. Also, the descriptions were wonderful. Everything down to the tiling of the harem floors was described and most extravagantly Nakshidil's outfits were described from her emerald earrings to her blue kaftans to her high-heeled bath shoes. The settings and the language also made the book enjoyable. The exotic and sultry harem and the new Turkish vocabulary all made the story more cultural and enjoyable.
I liked this book a lot and was happy I did get it after all. I finished it in only six days...I couldn't put it down!

Janet Wallach's Seraglio is an enjoyable, engaging read--the story of a young woman, 13 year old Aimee, who is kidnapped and becomes a slave in the Turkish sultan's seraglio. She befriends Tulip, the eunuch who serves as the novel's narrator, and ultimately works her way up in the seraglio over the course of many years. The story of the novel is an interesting, easy read. The choice of Tulip as the narrator is a curious one. In certain parts of the novel, he essentially must spy on Aimee to get events into the narrative, which can be clunky. The natural narrator for the novel would have been Aimee--but for whatever reason, Wallach chose Tulip. All in all, this is a nice, interesting, easy read. Enjoy.

These are the things that comes to mind when we think of a seraglio, but it's nothing compared to the rich decadence, the luxury, the subtle sensuality of Wallach's story, which takes place inside the forbidding walls of the celebrated Topkapi Palace in the heart of Istanbul, the capital of the Turkish Empire.

Wallach's little book transports us to the forbidden world of a Turkish harem, where in spite its alluring splendor, it's also a dangerous place ridden with secret intrigues, betrayals, and deadly secrets. The story is told by Tulip, the eunuch slave who becomes Nakshidil's best friend and confidant.

Nakshidil journey from a noble girl born in Martinique (when she was Aimee), captured by pirates in the Atlantic, sold as a slave in Algiers, and given as a present to the Sultan himself, where she becomes a concubine and ending her life as the mother of the future sultan of Turkey is truly a remarkable.

Giving the nature of this novel and its surroundings, Wallach resists the temptation of making this story too graphic or too vulgar or otherwise obscene. The descriptions of the Topkapi palace are described with fantastic details, but the story spins around Nashkidil and her immediate friends and enemies.

In spite of her amazing story, for some reason, I tend to like Tulip better than Aimee/Nashkidil, whose life have had some amazing turns too.

Father Chrysostomos is not the same Father Chrysostomos of Smyrna, the unfortunate metropolitan of the Orthodox Church who was brutally assassinated by a Turkish mob in 1922.

An interesting book indeed, better than I had anticipated. I hope someone makes a move based on this story.

5 "decadent" stars

The premise of this fictional account of an historical event is so intriguing that it seemed impossible for it to be a disappointing read. And yet it was. Though Wallach more than adequately describes "what they wore" and "what they looked like" she isn't able to tell the story very convincingly. Curiously she chooses to tell Nakshidil (the woman whose story inspired this novel) story from the perspective of Nakshidil's chief eunuch/servant Tulip. Perhaps that is Wallach's mistake. Tulip's tone is stilted and unconvincing. Though he demonstrates untimely knowledge of modern psychotherapy by encouraging Nakshidil to purge her soul in order to exorcise her demons, it goes no further than that. We never have the feeling that we understand who Tulip is, what he feels, what he has endured and what Nakshidil has experienced. This would be fine if the author hadn't introduced the possibility that we might have some insight into what these two people endured.

I really enjoyed reading Seraglio. The descriptions of the Turkish palaces and people were very well done - very colorful - and felt like it transported me back in time.

I feel as though it was well written, and liked that Tulip, Nakshidil's eunich, was narrating the story. It brings the reader through practically her entire life and the many changes that took place during the Ottoman Empire.

This is a book well worth reading!

I will make this short but not so sweet... I LOVE harem books. Always have and always will!... er, okay, maybe not "always" as all I can say about this book is don't waste your time or your precious money on it. If you want to read the origional, and completely engaging story then look no further than "Sultana" by "Prince Michael Of Greece" (Avon Books, May 1984) Sultana a Novel or Sultana. This sad knock-off is a complete waste of time and, being a lover of the origional book, I find it quite distasteful for Aimee's story to be re-written this way.

I absolutely loved this book. Being fascinated by Mozarts opera "The Abduction from the Seraglio," I wanted to learn more about the harem. So I found this book and couldn't put it down once I got it! I think it is very cleverly written, with Tuplip (her eunich) narrating the story. I thought Wallach did an excellent job with writing about Aimee. The Seraglio life is depicted very well, and I felt as though I was taken back in time. Her mentions of Mozart's opera from time to time was a cool touch and well done (and also very appropriate in many ways). I found this to be a fascinating and interesting read, and I am now reading it again for the second time.

I very much enjoyed this book and unlike previous reviewers I did care about the characters. The story centers around a very young french girl who is kidnapped by pirates and given to the Sultan on the Ottoman empire. Aimee is renamed Nakshidil, forced to become a muslim and to have sex with an aged and decrepit sultan. Aimee is befriended by a palace eunuch named Tulip and as we learn about Aimee's future in the Seraglio (harem) we learn about Tulip's past. This is an engrossing tale of two misfits whose friendship sustains and nutures them through the good times and bad.

I continued reading and hoping that the book would get better. It didn't! The characters were really one-dimensional and I never "cared" about any of them. The premise is very much like Bertrice Small's book "The Kadin, " but Small's book has richer imagery, more developed characters, and a much more interesting conclusion.

This is an awful book. The author makes huge leaps in the plot and the characters are uninteresting and shallow. You are told by the author that a particular character cares about someone or something, but their actions up until that point lead you to believe otherwise. Also, people simply do not speak the way characters in this book do. Using the eunuch Tulip as a narrator here was a bad idea. The author is constantly concocting ridiculous ways in which Tulip gets access into the private meetings of the Ottoman royalty.