Before He Was Red with Christina Ståhle (Pebble Press, 2025)

About this episode

Few things delight a historical novelist more than true stories of forgotten individuals remembered, if they are remembered at all, for one dramatic moment or act. Flora Cordier—a Belgian glove maker who apparently married the last effective Ottoman sultan, Abdulhamid II (1876–1909), before his accession to the throne—is just such a person. Flora left almost no impression in the historical record, not much more than a newspaper account and a few references to her outside the empire in later life, yet the question of how a European craftswoman might not only have set up shop in nineteenth-century Istanbul but have also crossed the path of a prince from the House of Osman begs to be told. Christina Ståhle tackles this problem with aplomb in Before He Was Red (Pebble Press, 2025), her debut novel. The title refers to Abdulhamid’s later nickname, Red (in the sense of bloody), reflecting his use of terror and violence to suppress his enemies. Here he goes by the name Hamid, a choice made in part out of necessity (heirs to the Ottoman throne in the 1870s are not supposed to leave the palace) and in part to conceal his true identity from Flora and from the numerous rebels, mostly student