Just finished:
The Sultan's Harem
Colin Falconer
www.amazon.com/Sultans-Ha.../1400083125

This is great historical fiction. All the better because, as the author notes, one can never know what went on in the harem of the greatest Sultan who ever lived: Suleyman the Magnificent. That leaves plenty of room for authorial imagination without undermining the credibility of the historical research. We know that Suleyman gave up his harem filled with hundreds of the most beautiful women from all over his vast empire. We know that he broke entirely with his tradition and took from it only one woman and made her his wife. Falconer takes us into the harem and into the minds of Hurrem and Suleyman (among others) and tells his version of their great love story set against the backdrop of the high point of the Ottoman empire and a dynasty that allowed for a Sultan to kill all his brothers and their children to protect his succession and the stability of the Empire.
Compelling reading.

This is the second of Falconer’s books that I have enjoyed. The first being Feathered Serpent, a book about the woman Malinali - translator to Cortes and mother of modern Mexico. There are some interesting parallels between these books. In both the central protagonist is a woman enslaved to a powerful man. Both women rise to positions of great power in their respective empires against tremendous odds. Falconer is one of the few to tell their story .