Nancy Knudsen never meant to go to Istanbul.

Maybe she might have included it as part of a holiday along with other dazzling European cities such as Venice, Paris or Salzburg. But the idea of actually living in a Muslim country as an ordinary citizen rather than tourist or expat corporate executive, would never have occurred to her.

Knudsen's story is vivid, lively and sometimes hilarious, full of insights into things she wished she'd known before she arrived in an all-black apartment above a sports field, with not a word of Turkish. She found almost nothing in guidebooks or...