Istanbul to Montréal: the story of an immigrant

ISTANBUL to MONTREAL, the story of an immigrant is Byron Ayanoglu’s new novel. Based loosely on his own life, it tells the story of twelve year-old Dimitri, an Istanbullu who checks into Montreal in the glory days of the Canadian metropolis in the late fifties. It branches out from there to span the decades recounting the adventures of its protagonist, the unbreakable bond to his mother, his four marriages, his inability to fit firmly into Canada, his unconventional career, his travels. It starts in Istanbul with the delirious friendship of two preteens, and all the attendant proclamations of life-long devotion; it develops in Montreal and around the world as a man and a woman try to make sense of their unruly lives and their tumultuous relationship; and in ends in Istanbul, the eternal city to which Dimitri returns in the twenty-first century, fifty years after he had last seen his childhood sweetheart. This is a story of food and lust and love and travel and an unending search for a sense of belonging, a sense of home. It is about culture clash, and the budding culture of a brave new land. It is about having some laughs and sharing them with the reader. The world’s a stage, and all of us in it merely pawns at the whimsical dictates of a witty God.