New Books Network Interview: Christina Stahle
As someone currently hard at work on a novel based on a historical person whose entire existence in the documentary record comprises one mention in a letter and a series of perhaps twenty listings in Elizabethan court records, Christina Ståhle’s debut novel, Before He Was Red naturally appealed to me even before I learned that it was set during the declining years of the Ottoman Empire. So it was a natural choice for a New Books Network interview with the author.
By the time this novel begins, the once-great Turkish state had acquired the moniker “the sick man of Europe”—a far cry from the realm of Suleiman the Magnificent (known to his own people as the Lawgiver, an even more impressive achievement). But even in the 1870s, during what is known as the “Summer of the Three Sultans,” Suleiman’s descendants were still a force to be reckoned with. Read on, and listen to our interview, to find out more.
As usual, the rest of this post comes from New Books in Historical Fiction.
Few things delight a historical novelist more than true stories of forgotten individuals remembered, if they are remembered at all, for one dramatic moment or act. Flora Cordier—a Belgian glove maker who apparently married the last effective Ottoman sultan, Abdulhamid II (1876–1909), before his accession to the throne—is just such a person. Flora left almost no impression in the historical record, not much more than a newspaper account and a few references to her outside the empire in later life, yet the question of how a European craftswoman might not only have set up shop in nineteenth-century Istanbul but have also crossed the path of a prince from the House of Osman, begs to be told.
Christina Ståhle tackles this problem with aplomb in Before He Was Red (Pebble Press, 2025), her debut novel. The title refers to Abdulhamid’s later nickname, Red (in the sense of bloody), reflecting his use of terror and violence to suppress his enemies. Here he goes by the name Hamid, a choice made in part out of necessity (heirs to the Ottoman throne in the 1870s are not supposed to leave the palace) and in part to conceal his true identity from Flora and from the numerous rebels, mostly students, massing in the streets of Istanbul to protest the actions, or lack thereof, of the government.
It’s a tense time, with the Russian Empire stirring up rebellion among the Christian populations of the Balkan states, still officially under Ottoman rule, and the British Empire doing its best to control the Turks both financially and politically. Ståhle does a wonderful job of juggling the historical, political, and romantic plot lines, maneuvering a large cast of characters, some of whom have multiple identities, without ever losing sight of the drama inherent in the romance between Flora and Hamid.
Photograph of Prince Abdulhamid at Balmoral in 1867 public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
