The Topkapi Secret

This subtly right-wing and thoroughly anti-Muslim debut novel by “Dr.” (?) Kelhawk was launched with an enormous online peddling effort predicting an international bestseller. In reality, it is a thinly disguised, extremely primitive, even incoherent attack on Islam, claiming on its fringes that the Qur’an was unauthentic. An attack so unqualified that it would be an insult to Ayan Hirsi Ali, Michael Cook, Bernard Lewis, Arthur Jeffrey, Alphonse Mingana, Gerd R. Puin and Ibn Warraq - all referred to by Kelhawk - to have her included in this crème de la crème of violent critics of Islam. On the cover she modestly states that her book could change the world ... or cost readers their lives, implying that she is after a fatwa, repeating the financial success of Salman Rushdie.

Alas, the author’s style recalls cheap novellas one reads riding the subway (:“A hint of gold shone from a tooth on the right side of his mouth”). Typically, many of the book’s short chapters consist of short conversational sentences only, hardly any pages dealing with the Topkapi Palace. This unmasks the book’s title as a sales gimmick.