After an attempted military coup against President Erdogan in 2016, journalist and novelist Kaya Genc travelled around his country on a quest to find the places and people in whom the contrasts of Turkey's rich past meet. As suicide bombers attack Istanbul, and journalists and teachers are imprisoned, he walks the streets of the famous Ottoman neighbourhoods, and tells the stories of the ordinary Turks. The Lion and the Nightingale tells the spellbinding tale of a country split between East and West, violence and beauty - between the roar of the lion and the song of the nightingale.