A recent review:
Richard Gault writes: Here are three wonderful books – books literally full of wonder – from the pen of a truly accomplished wordsmith. They are not quite a trilogy in the usual sense of the word, but all three share a setting, follow a chronological sequence and have characters who overlap.
...These books seem to me to be like the work of an artist whose palette is language and whose pen is his brush. Ryan does not paint with broad strokes, nor in the pixilated style of pointillism, but with the fine attention to detail of Vermeer. Like the Dutch master, he brings the worlds he portrays to life with a real warmth. Those worlds may be far from ours, separated from us by more than time and space, yet immersed in his books we inhabit them. For a while we cross the lands of the eastern Mediterranean of more than a century ago. We share the intimate lives of his characters, whose humanity is tangible and whose loves and losses we too endure.
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Story of the Damascus Drum
…If you come and visit the Café, you will see a fine goatskin drum hanging above the counter.
Test Two
It all started with a visit by Christopher to Damascus, where he found an old drum in the local bazaar. Later, back in Hawick, the drum started telling its story: of Daud, left naked and bereft on a Syrian mountainside, and of Shams, the billy goat, who one day (after losing his bell, now hanging behind the counter) was filled with a sense of wonder and began a long journey …After many wild adventures and amorous encounters, Shams the goat died, and his hide became the drum: ‘We animals are not dumb’, he told Daud, “and the skin of an animal can speak things you couldn’t imagine.”
So starts a story of high drama, murder, deceit, true love and how to find happiness in the end.
To buy:
Author signed copies available in the Cafe
Alternatively, both paperback and ebook versions can be ordered from Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.
Satanaya and the Houses of Mercy
Follow the adventures of Satanaya, a young Circassian girl growing to womanhood as she travels through the Mediterranean in the last days of the Ottoman Empire. Accompanied by her cooking pot, a wooden spoon and an old cookbook, Satanaya discovers food, love and a deeper sense of self in her encounters with some remarkable women and men on her journey to the fabled city of Constantinople…
To buy:
Author signed copies available in the Cafe
Alternatively, both paperback and ebook versions can be ordered from Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.
An Ark In The Flood Of Time
An Ark in the Flood of Time
It tells the tale of Satanaya and Mustafa, as dark clouds of war descend over Ottoman lands in the early 20th Century. The year is 1911. Fresh from her sojourn in Konya, Satanaya arrives in Constantinople, to take up a position as lady's companion with an influential Ottoman family. Captain Mustafa meantime waits impatiently in the Middle East for a change in the political situation in his Turkish homeland. While Satanaya strives for meaning in her personal journey, can she also find fulfilment in Mustafa's uncompromising ambition for a modern Turkish state?
To buy:
Author signed copies available in the Cafe
Alternatively, both paperback and ebook versions can be ordered from Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.
A Child Prisoner of War
Changi and Sime Road Camps, Singapore, 1942-45
A small volume of non-fiction, written by Christopher about his father, who ran away to sea when he was just 14 years old. He joined the Merchant Navy at the beginning of WW2 , was sunk and rescued, joined a troop ship going East and eventually found himself in Singapor, on the day the Japanese invaded…
‘Christopher writes: It is commonly accepted that children are a gift to their parents. But the opposite may also be true, that parents by their efforts and achievements may be a gift to those that come after…