When I received an offer to write a book on "Turkish Coffee Culture" I wanted to review the literature before I began writing. It was enough merely to peruse the bibliographies of the books in my library to intimidate myself. It appeared that almost everything had already been written on the history of coffee and coffehouses.
There was one thing could do: base my work predpminantly on literary texts. This was indeed a difficult undertaking: since it was impossible to review the literature in such a short time, I was obliged to content myself with what I could access and strive to produce a text that was different from its precedents.
