“This is an enchanting tale of love: a man dreams of a woman, while she dreams of the man who is dreaming of her. It reminds me of Silk by Alessandro Baricco, and One Thousand and One Nights, but Alev Croutier has a voice of her own, soft and poetic, like music in a Turkish garden.”

Isabel Allende

House of the Spirits

“Of all the adventures Scheherazade could narrate, only one was forbidden: a maddening erotic passion between an Eastern woman and a Western man. And that is precisely what Alev Croutier achieves. In The Palace of Tears, we get entangled in the lovers’ impossible situation as one could expect. But all this is done with the talent of a sophisticated storyteller, who uses cinematic imagery to excite our sensuality, making us smell the flowers,taste the wines, gaze at the colorful miniatures or overwhelming sunsets. Fatima Mernissi

Dreams of Tresspass

“Alev Croutier’s grownup fairy tale, with its strangely mesmerizing events, operates in a wonderful space between story and history and lures the reader into that place directly.”

Diane Johnson

Le Divorce

In The Palace of Tears, Alev Croutier has woven a rich tapestry combining the Dionysian Eastern opulence of the past century with a compellingly sensual tale of one man’s quest for the woman who may fulfill his dreams, yet shatter his touch with reality.

Katherine Neville, The Eight

The Palace of Tears is at once exquisitely distilled and intensely dramatic. Reading it is a rare experience. Like opening a pomegranate and finding inside it a panoramic sweep of history, an amazing voyage, a mingling of two cultures, and a grand passion—a passion sparked by an unforgettable pair of eyes: one blue, one yellow.”

Noelle Oxenhandler

Eros of Parenthood