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Jason Goodwin is the bestselling author of The Janissary Tree, The Snake Stone, The Bellini Card and An Evil Eye, a series of novels featuring Yashim, the Istanbul investigator. Jason studied Byzantine history at Cambridge University – and then returned to an old obsession to write The Gunpowder Gardens: Travels in China and India in Search of Tea, which was shortlisted for the Thomas Cook Award. When the Berlin Wall fell, he walked from Poland to Istanbul to encounter the new European neighbours. His account of the journey, On Foot to the Golden Horn, won the John Llewellyn Rhys/Mail on Sunday Prize in 1993. Fascinated by what he had learned of Istanbul’s perpetual influence in the region, he wrote Lords of the Horizons: A History of the Ottoman Empire, a New York Times Notable Book. ‘If you want to learn,’ he says, ‘write a book.’ Lords of the Horizons was described by Time Out as ‘perhaps the most readable history ever written on anything.’ Having always wanted to write fiction, he wrote The Janissary Tree, which won the coveted Edgar Award for Best Novel in 2007. The Yashim books have been translated into more than 40 languages. Jason lives with his wife and their four children in England.
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