Konstantiniyye Oteli

Konstantiniyye Oteli follows the 2014 opening gala of a seven-star hotel built atop the excavated remains of a Byzantine necropolis in Istanbul. Each of the high-profile guests seated at the ceremony represents some current thread of the city's public life, and through Zehra — the right hand of the hotel's wealthy owner — Zülfü Livaneli threads their stories together with those of the hotel staff and the ghosts of Istanbul's Byzantine past.

As the numbered tables move outward from the guest of honor, status anxiety, envy, and old resentments surface among the assembled elite, exposing the fault lines beneath the city's glossy modern surface. Through Zehra's eyes, the novel moves fluidly between the city's wealthy, its underclasses, and its dead, using one hotel's opening night to unfold Istanbul's long history from Byzantium to the present.

Konstantiniyye Oteli was adapted into the television series Kefaret (2020-2021).