Having survived the childhood trauma of his parents’ untimely deaths in the early skirmishes of World War I, Mümtaz has been raised and mentored in Istanbul by a cousin, Ishan, and his cosmopolitan family of intellectuals. Having lived through the radical cultural upheavel following the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the rise of the early Turkish Republic, each is challenged by the difficulties brought about by such rapid social change.

Now in 1939, the promise of modernization and progress has given way to crippling anxiety rather than hope for the future. What does seem certain about the new world in which they find themselves is fragmentation and destabilization. Mümtaz takes refuge in the fading past, immersing himself in Turkish literature and music, but when he falls in love with Nuran, a complex woman with demanding relations, he is forced to confront the challenges of the world at large. Can his love for Nuran save them both from the turbulent times and protect them from disaster, or will his emotional and intellectual obsessions, along with powerful social forces seemingly set against them, tear the couple apart?

A Mind at Peace, originally published in 1949, is a magnum opus, a Turkish Ulysses, and a lyrical homage to Istanbul. With an innate awareness of how dueling cultural mentalities can lead to the paradox of divided selves, Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar gauges this moment in history by masterfully portraying its register on the layered psyches of his Istanbulite characters. Set on the eve of World War II in the “city of two continents,” this literary feat is a narrative of duality: a historical novel and a love story of the senses and the mind, language and music, old and new, religion and nation, eastern and western—and of the juncture where one young man must attempt to bridge all of these worlds at once.