• The Janissary Tree

  • A Novel
  • By: Jason Goodwin
  • Narrated by: Stephen Hoye
  • Length: 11 hrs and 22 mins
  • 3.8 out of 5 stars (414 ratings)

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The Janissary Tree  By  cover art

The Janissary Tree

By: Jason Goodwin
Narrated by: Stephen Hoye
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Publisher's summary

The Janissary Tree, the first book in a new series, is set in a most extraordinary world and features a most extraordinary sleuth.

It is 1836. Europe is modernizing, and the Ottoman Empire must follow suit. But just before the sultan announces sweeping changes, a wave of murders threatens the fragile balance of power in his court. Who is behind them? Only one intelligence agent can be trusted to find out: Yashim Togalu, a man both brilliant and near-invisible in this world.

You see, Yashim is a eunuch.

He leads us into the palace's luxurious seraglios and Istanbul's teeming streets, and leans on the wisdom of a dyspeptic Polish ambassador, a transsexual dancer, and a Creole-born queen mother. He finds sweet salvation in the arms of another man's wife. (This is not your everyday eunuch.) And he introduces us to the Janissaries. For, 400 years earlier, the sultan had them crushed. Are the Janissaries staging a brutal comeback?

©2007 Jason Goodwin (P)2007 Tantor Media Inc.

Critic reviews

  • Edgar Award, Best Novel, 2007

"A work of dazzling beauty....The rare coming together of historical scholarship and curiosity about distant places with luminous writing." (The New York Times Book Review)

What listeners say about The Janissary Tree

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars

history and story

I love audio books but this one was difficult for me to follow because of a constant need for the author to instill history into the story. sometimes this works very well but in this case it did not. it simply added to the already confusing story and i decided to leave the eunuch detective to solve this mystery without me listening.

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2 people found this helpful