One neighborhood in Istanbul: a window on a city, country, region, and world in a state of upheaval.

Karagumruk, an Istanbul neighborhood once dominated by Ottoman-era homes, is now known for its cheap apartment blocks and petty thieves—and a massive influx of Syrian refugees. It's here that Suzy Hansen went looking for the truth behind the headlines of the Turkish president Erdoğan's authoritarian turn, a catastrophic regional war, and an accelerating geopolitical crisis. She discovered the neighborhood's secrets and got to know its people: Ismail, the longtime muhtar, or neighborhood councilman; Huseyin, a loyalist for Erdoğan's Islamic nationalist AK party; and Ebru, a real estate agent and mother with ambitions to unseat Ismail.

From Life Itself is the absorbing account of one neighborhood in Istanbul that has seen profound change. But in a remarkable turn, Hansen connects the events unfolding in Karagumruk to the forces roiling Turkey, the Middle East, and the world. She asks: Was Turkey a harbinger of what we'd soon see in other countries, the resurgence of authoritarianism? Or do the lives of this neighborhood, and the transformations of Erdoğan's Turkey, reveal a more complex story?

The author of the acclaimed Pulitzer Prize finalist Notes on a Foreign Country, Hansen explores Turkey's place in the world as no other writer has. From Life Itself is a book for our time—a story for a world out of joint, and for all of us who feel the pressure of the disorienting global forces remaking our lives.