Off the coast of Istanbul, in the Marmara Sea, lie the Princes Islands, an archipelago of unusual natural beauty, which has long been considered the maritime suburb of the imperial capital on the Bosporus and effectively shaped by its manifold history. The poet Joachim Sartorius draws a loving portrait of the landscape and the light, the political observer Sartorius describes the microcosm, which was always a reflection of Istanbul-Constantinople-Byzantium, while the novelist Sartorius introduces us to the characters, who inhabit this time capsule.

Joachim Sartorius was born in 1946 and is a poet, translator and journalist. He grew up in Tunis and worked as a diplomat for two decades in New York, Istanbul and Nicosia. He was the General Secretary of the Goethe Institut until 2000 and then became the Director of the Berlin Festival.