Drawing on several years’ experience living in the Balkans as well as his study of Ottoman economic history, Bruce McGowan has written this novel about an individual who lives in two worlds: Vienna and Istanbul. The subject is a young Austrian, Sebastian, who survives the Ottoman siege of Vienna in 1683. After his own military expedition into the Balkans ends in disaster, Sebastian is captured by the Turks and ends up in Istanbul. There, he experiences the ‘other’ world and discovers himself anew.