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'An absorbing, monumental story . . . a reliable, authoritative account . . . a balanced assessment of the Ottomans . . . a marvellous achievement, which deserves to provoke widespread debate'
(Jerry Brotton, BBC History magazine )'A Turkish delight' (Metro (London) )
'Splendidly written . . . Finkel's intimacy with the material makes this the most authoritative narrative history of the empire yet published . . . Detailed . . . Her narrative focuses on the dynamics of the imperial story . . . lively analysis'
(Jason Goodwin, Literary Review )'History written with a dynamic, modern feel and penetrating gaze'
(Good Book Guide )'Instructive . . . A fine single-volume account of a long and at times complicated period . . . Finkel clearly loves her subject' (The Tablet )
'The freshness of Finkel's history [is] striking. The secret, apart from an irresistible narrative style, is a generous openness to every aspect of Ottoman life and culture . . . What has often come across as an impossibly exotic procession of Viziers, Beys and Pashas is here brought vividly home to the reader'
(Michael Kerrigan, The Scotsman )'Excellent'
(The Times )BBC History magazine
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THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE ended on a particular day, but its beginnings are shrouded in myth. Read the first page
Concordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Finkel unites this long history in a manner that disentangles its complexities, brings its individuals to life, and connects the Ottoman past to the Turkish present. Even with well known episodes, she manages to add something new, often through the deft use of Ottoman sources in a sprightly translation. It is a huge book, but for this reader, never seemed overlong.
There is often one book that will outlast all the others on any given subject, and will define the topic for a generation. Finkel already has a reputation in her academic area of Ottoman studies. The truly remarkable aspect of Osman's Dream is that it is good not just on her speciality, but all the way through, from the 14th to the 20th century. Might this not be THE history book of 2005?
Finkel is not a fluent writer. Or it would be more accurate to say that she doesn't make for fluent reading. She is given to long sentences - often very long (with parentheses inside parentheses) indeed - they loop on and on with semicolons marking extra bits tacked on at the end; like that, only longer. Too often I found myself deep into a sentence, still searching for a subject, an object, or the main verb. Sentences that sprawl over five or six lines are common, and on at least two occasions there were sentences that covered ten lines. It is always possible to construe a meaningful and grammatical sentence, but goodness it's hard work at times. She also presumes in the reader a very thorough knowledge of both the geography and history of Eurasia from the mediaeval to the present. Obscure geographical references are often dropped into the text with no gloss whatsoever, and neither the maps nor the index provide sufficient reference. I needed to keep a good atlas to hand, and to make extensive use of Wikipedia. I have some knowledge of Istanbul, otherwise would have been stumped more often. The index is uneven - even Kiev, which is of great strategic importance and features often in the narrative, isn't indexed.
It reads like the first draft of a really excellent book. It needs serious work on sentence structure, more and better maps, and more provision of signposts for the general reader. Informative chapter headings would be a start, with clear subheadings. Finkel claims to be writing for that general reader, but at the moment the book is unnecessarily opaque and difficult to read.
In this book, Caroline Finkel offers us a single-volume history of the Ottoman Empire, ranging from its obscure origins to its demise in the 1920s. Though similar overviews have been written before, her goal is to dispel the traditional 'rise and fall' approach and to free the empire from its' stereotyping as, in her words, 'a theatre of the absurd.' Tapping into the enormous wealth of recent scholarly work on the Ottomans, she offers a far more complex and nuanced portrayal of the empire than in most popular accounts – pointing out, for example, that the ranks of the soldiers of the early empire included as many Christians as it did Muslims, and that it was not until well into the empire's decline in the 18th century that the Ottoman sultans began to embrace the previously disused title of caliph.
Yet the book suffers from a relatively narrow focus. Most of the text is dominated by a narrative of high politics, one concentrating on the machinations and maneuvering of the sultans; other elements, such as the complex social and economic structures of the empire, are addressed only in passing. Moreover, Finkel rarely explains the empire in any depth. Key institutions such as the janissaries are mentioned and their political role is addressed, but the reasons for their existence and maintenance are rarely analyzed in detail. The result is that while readers are informed of the 'who' 'what' and 'when' of Ottoman history, the 'how' and the 'why' often are left unaddressed.
Nonetheless, Finkel has provided an accessible overview of the Ottoman Empire, one largely free from the Eurocentric stereotyping all too typical of many earlier histories of the subject. While the text is often dense with details, the narrative itself is straightforward and a useful set of maps are provided to help readers master the intricacies of the human geography of the period. This book is likely to serve as the standard work on the empire for many years to come, though one that should be supplemented by more explanatory texts.
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