Ellie McKnight is a bright academic working at Belfast University. When she falls for a minor diplomat, Ellie throws caution to the wind, jettisons her career and follows him to a posting at the British Consulate in Istanbul. And so begins her extraordinary journey in Margaret Whittock’s ingenious and atmospheric novel, Ghost of Gallipoli. Our protagonist is quickly thrown into the rarified world of the diplomatic corps and it’s a loose fit. Ensconced in a grand imperial pile in the hills above the Bosphorus, she crashes into the pomposity of middle England and we are treated to a legion of small-minded expatriates, a ‘tight-knit group of wives into jam and chutney making’ led by head bitch, Alice Melefont. But all is not as it seems.
