Imperial Harem

The reading assignment of this book is a remarkable difference in history courses approach. What normally focus on males role and male decision making, the assignment and understanding of the imperial harem is a different approach to another structure of the functions of the harem and the role of women in the Ottoman society how they can build their own structure of government, gather themselves, like the Januaries and how they can keep wealth amongst themselves.

The book is hard to read but interesting. on my own experience I had to return 3 or sometimes 4 times to a paragraph to understand it , the use of names and different family levels made the reading difficult. The reading is very explicit and very detail oriented. It would be faster and easier if the book provides a family map where to relate the different names used in the literature.

Besides the complexity of this novel, the language it uses is complicated. To relate and pronounce a name correctly takes a quite few minutes and after that remember who use that name for gets complicated.
It helped me to reestablish the normal point of view of an empire. I realize that woman played an important role, often ignore, in the incidents of man and its roles in history. She is like the back up plan, when options are extinct they seem to have the solution.