Luke Frostick (Editor in chief)

I’m glad winter is coming to an end. It’s been cold and my motivation to even poke my head out from my duvet has been minimal. We have a great edition of the review coming up with some top quality non-fiction and creative non-fiction. It remains a special privilege to work with such talented writers and the wonderful editors who nobly suffer for the review.

Thanks to everybody who worked so hard on their pieces for us and special thanks to Jakup Dluhosch for this month’s cover art.

Looking forward to another year in the Bosphorus Review. It seems likely that we will be producing a book at some point this year, which is very exciting and I hope to provide more info on this when I get it.

This month I’m very happy to see two interviews with Ottoman historians. I love history, it was my undergraduate degree after all and Istanbul has one of the deepest, most complex histories that you could wish for. I generally feel that I don't have the experience required to write reviews of history books. Granted, I did do one review of John Freely’s Beyoğlu Pera: A biography, which is a history book but then again I live in Beyoğlu so felt I could talk about it. That's why I really like the interview format when it. I think that interviews are a good way of drawing attention to important books on history and with the experts themselves explaining their work you can really get to the heart of the issues behind them. This is particularly true when it comes to the Ottomans who, outside of the academy are misunderstood at best outside of the Middle East; while within the Middle East their history and legacy is so often twisted to serve modern political agendas.

I hope to see more work on the Ottomans and history in general.

Happy reading.