Thank you for being interested in A Court at Constantinople for your reading group or book club. Please find below some potential questions to ponder in discussing the novel.
1. How do the main characters—James Bingham, Osman Mehmed, and Rosamund Colborne—change over the course of the story?
2. James, Mehmed, and Rosamund have different understandings of what law and justice mean? How would you describe each character’s relationship with law? With justice?
3. Lord Stratford describes Judge Edmund Hornby’s vision of a “shared body of law” serving a “universal concept of justice.” In contrast, Hugh Colborne treats law as a weapon and justice as a ruse. Where do these perspectives on law and justice stand at the end of the story?
4. The British considered the Ottomans “uncivilized,” a status embedded in the treaty between the two empires. Proud of their civilization, the Ottomans hated this status and the treaty. But, in the story, how were the European and Islamic civilizations similar rather than different?
5. Mehmed and his rival, Ali, resist British power and European influence differently. But what proves most dangerous as these young men attempt to navigate all the change affecting their lives?
6. Emelia Hornby tells Rosamund that “men too often leave women with no good options. Resisting that fate is a type of justice.” How do Emelia, Rosamund, and Katherine Colborne each resist that fate? Does their resistance produce justice?
7. During the dinner at the British embassy, Lord Stratford asks whether Rosamund has suffered some injustice that justifies her behavior. “Here and in England. Everywhere I have been as a woman,” Rosamund responds. Does Rosamund’s retort still resonate today?
8. According to Rosamund, Henry Wattling failed as a soldier, merchant, evangelical, and—finally—as “some species of lawyer.” Why is this litany of failures important in the novel?
9. In the final scene, upon learning the fates of Mehmed and Rosamund, James asks Edmund Hornby, “Did we do them justice?” Edmund does not respond. How would you answer James’s question? What would doing them justice have required?
10. What follow-on novel would you most like to read—about Edmund and James building a court in China, or Rosamund and Mehmed arriving in America on the brink of the Civil War?
