The Dervish House

Ian McDonald's book "The Dervish House" is set in Istanbul, in the middle of the 21st Century. It opens with suicide bombing of a tram, that doesn't kill anyone but the bomber herself. One of the witnesses, Necdet, lives at an old dervish house and starts seeing djinn in the aftermath. Another resident of that house (Can, a young boy with a weak heart who wears earplugs to prevent being startled by loud noises) is also a witness, via his toy robot. The other point of view characters (another 4 of them) are also residents or connected with the dervish house. There is Leyla, a young woman from outside Istanbul but part of a large extended family in the city just starting out in marketing. Georgios is an old man, one of the few Greek Christians left in the city, who was once both an economist and a political activist. Ayse owns a high class antiques & art gallery in the dervish house, and her husband Adnan is a trader (in the stocks & shares sense) with a foolproof scheme/scam to get rich.

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