Pierre Loti

This guide to Pierre Loti in Istanbul follows Julien Viaud, a young French naval officer who arrived in Constantinople in 1876 and fell into a secret love affair with a Circassian woman he called Aziyadé, met in the teahouses on this same hill above the Golden Horn. It traces the novel he wrote from that affair, published under a pen name he'd picked up at sea, and the gold ring bearing her name that he wore until he died. Listen from the hillside where he once sat and wrote.