1453 The Conquest

In Constantinople, empires are about to collide, lovers are about to depart, and the world is about to change for ever.

Beyazit Akman’s epic, 1453: The Conquest is the first novel to appear in English that tells the story of the era-changing war of 1453 for Constantinople between the Ottomans and the Eastern Roman Empire. Written after five years of archival research in libraries worldwide, the novel is a page-turner based on sound historical research. It is also the first of its kind to expound on the life of the renowned fifteenth century historical character, Ottoman-Turkish Sultan Mehmed II, also known as  the Conqueror.

Celebrated as a national bestseller in its home country of Turkey, the novel has also helped to revitalize historical fiction and has been an inspiration for TV series and films. The novel also lends a new perspective to the centuries-old debate of Constantinople’s fall versus its conquest..

Beyazit Akman is a bestselling novelist of historical fiction and professor of English literature. He earned his M.A. in English literature at Illinois State University, as a Fulbright Scholar in 2006, and completed his Ph.D. at the same university in 2012. In 2010, he was awarded the Smithsonian Baird Society Fellowship in Washington DC. He taught at State University of New York, Geneseo, as a visiting professor from 2012 to 2014. He started writing historical fiction after years of archival research at university libraries in the United States. His first novel, 1453: The Conquest, was an instant success and became one of the bestselling novels for a first-time author in his native Turkey. It has become a contemporary classic and has inspired many historical TV series, movies and novels, and launched a new era of historical fiction in Turkey. He is currently an assistant professor of English literature at the Social Sciences University of Ankara.