The Architect’s Apprentice is a sprawling novel covering more than a century of Turkish history starting in 1540 when a twelve-year-old boy, Jahan, arrives in the city accompanying Chota, an Indian elephant gifted to the Sultan. The Sultan’s architect, Sinan, notices the boy’s native intelligence and arranges for his education as he continues to serves as the mahout (trainer) to the elephant. Sinan becomes a father figure, and Jahan eventually becomes his apprentice. A princess visits Jahan and Chota in their lodgings, and Jahan falls hard for this unattainable young woman. Sinan, while encouraging his four apprentices, also pits them against each other to produce bigger, better projects which also drives them apart. In the end, Jahan falls prey to the ambition of another apprentice and to the machinations of the princess and is driven from Istanbul to a new future in India and the building of the Taj Mahal.
Author Shafak’s writing harkens back to a time of oral history and story-telling and magical realism, and the book has a bit of a Scherazade and A Thousand and One Nights feel. The sense of being in another time and place is built with sights, sounds, smells, tastes. Despite the meandering, rambling nature of the book, I found it magical and could hardly put it down.
********************
The Architect’s Apprentice (Penguin Books, March 31, 2015) is available through:
Your local independent bookseller | Amazon | Barnes & Noble
********************
You can read my review of Shafak’s Island of the Missing Trees, one of my favorite of her books, here.
********************
This post contains affiliate links to third party sites. These can help you visually identify books I recommend. If you make a purchase, I may receive a small compensation at no additional cost to you. This offsets some of the cost of maintaining this blog.
