The Sultan's Seal is a story of faith and desire, set within a gripping tale of murder in nineteenth-century Istanbul. When two young Englishwomen are found dead, wearing the symbol of the deposed sultan, Kamil Pasha, a magistrate in the new secular courts, sets out to find the killer. But his dispassionate belief in science and modernity is shaken by betrayal and widening danger. Were these political murders, or crimes of personal passion? Rich in sensuous detail, this novel brilliantly captures the political and social upheavals of the waning Ottoman Empire.