Karagümrük, an Istanbul neighborhood once dominated by Ottoman-era homes, is now known for petty thieves, cheap apartment blocks, and an influx of Syrian refugees. It’s here that Suzy Hansen went looking for the truth behind the Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s authoritarian turn, a catastrophic regional war, and an accelerating geopolitical crisis. She asks: Was Turkey a harbinger of what would soon arise in other countries, the resurgence of authoritarianism? Or do the lives in this neighborhood, and the transformations of Erdoğan’s Turkey, reveal a more complex story?

During a decade spent reporting from Karagümrük, Hansen discovered the neighborhood’s secrets and got to know some of its people: Ismail, the longtime muhtar, or neighborhood councilman; Huseyin, a loyalist in Erdoğan’s Islamic nationalist AK Party; and Ebru, a real estate agent and mother with ambitions to unseat Ismail. Through these local perspectives, Hansen connects the events unfolding in Karagümrük to the forces roiling Turkey, the Middle East, and the world, capturing the sweep of the last ten years in microcosm.
There is also a fascinating link to what is going on in New York City and the United States today.
From the author of the acclaimed Pulitzer Prize finalist Notes on a Foreign Country, From Life Itself is a story for a world out of joint. An absorbing account of one neighborhood in Istanbul that has seen profound change, it offers lessons for all of us who feel the pressure of the disorienting global forces remaking our lives.

Join us at the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung as Suzy Hansen sits down for a conversation with writer and journalist Natasha Lennard and Sean Jacobs, professor and director of the graduate program in international affairs at The New School.

About the Author: Suzy Hansen lived in Istanbul for more than a decade, where she was a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and many other publications. Her first book, Notes on a Foreign Country, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Nonfiction and the winner of the Overseas Press Club of America’s Cornelius Ryan Award. She has taught writing at Princeton University, New York University, and Bard College.

Light refreshments will be served. Please RSVP as space is limited: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdAW64kc36WLkbDjBlfQSk_artUYsLRoCPsgihfWPjZyzjVYg/viewform

Date and Time: May 27, 2026, at 6:00 p.m

Location: Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung New York Office, 275 Madison Avenue, Suite 2114, New York City

More Information: https://rosalux.nyc/events/book-launch-from-life-itself/