Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
33rd international conference on British and American Studies, Timisoara, Romanya, 25 - 27 Nisan 2024, ss.1
Gothic Cities in Crime Fiction: Ian Rankin’s Edinburgh and Ahmet Umit’s Istanbul
This paper is an exploration of the representations of Istanbul and Edinburgh as urban Gothic spaces in the
novels of Ahmet Ümit and Ian Rankin. Ahmet Ümit’s characterisation of Inspector Nevzat made him one of
the leading figures of the golden age of detective fiction in Turkish literature. His crime novels, however, are
undoubtedly the most important part of this series. The primary setting of his novels is “Istanbul”, variously
known as Byzantium or Constantinople. Ümit provides information and descriptions of various districts and
historical and cultural monuments of Istanbul while constructing the plot. Ian Rankin, one of the most
influential writers of Scottish crime fiction, uses urban space in his works, similar to Ahmet Ümit. Through
his fictional character Rebus, Rankin creates a Gothic atmosphere in Edinburgh, which he chases as his setting,
and he builds his crime story on this Gothic setting, at the same time presenting the reader with the historical
and natural beauty of the city. However, Edinburgh and Istanbul have two personalities—one monstrous and
the other kind and lovable. In other words, they have two distinct faces. Ahmet Ümit’s Istanbul and Ian
Rankin’s Edinburgh reflect this duality, which is a characteristic of gothic fiction, in their crime stories. This
study, thus, argues that, although their Edinburgh and Istanbul share many of the characteristics and
conventions of the hard-boiled detective and police novel, they also contain a variety of Gothic concepts which
share the common origins with crime fiction.