A USA TODAY Best seller!

Four hundred years before Oskar Schindler there was Suleiman the Magnificent, an Ottoman sultan who rescued thousands of Jews from the fires of the Inquisition. Inspired by this amazing and little-known moment in history, Nicole Dweck has imagined an enchanting family saga where the kindness of one man is repaid generations later.

It’s 1544, and young José Mendez and his family escape the Inquisition in Portugal with the aid of Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent. Yet it’s only just before fleeing that José even finds out he’s Jewish—and that his own parents died for their faith. As he makes a new life in Istanbul, he yearns to feel connected to the parents he lost, digging deeper into his Jewish roots. But when his own daughter secretly falls in love with the sultan’s Muslim son, José finds himself in a life-changing dilemma, one that will shape generations to come.

Centuries later, when Selim Osman, the last living descendant of the sultan, is diagnosed with a fatal condition, he abandons the only life he’s ever known and flees Istanbul, taking refuge in a New York hospital. In a twist of fate, he meets Hannah, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor and an artist striving to understand a father she barely knows. Unaware the connection they share goes back centuries, they feel an immediate pull to one another. But when something from Selim’s past comes to light, the act that bound two families centuries ago ripples into the future, threatening to tear them apart.

From the 16th-century harem to WWII Paris to modern-day New York, Nicole Dweck weaves together a spellbinding tapestry of history with transcendent love and spirituality that will absorb readers from the very first page.

During the second half of the 16th century, a wealthy widow by the name of Doña Antonia Nissim is arrested and charged with being a secret Jew. The punishment? Death by burning. Enter Suleiman the Magnificent, an Ottoman “Schindler,” and the most celebrated sultan in all of Turkish history. With the help of the Sultan, the widow and her children manage their escape to Istanbul. Life is seemingly idyllic for the family in their new home, that is, until the Sultan’s son meets and falls in love with Tamar, Doña Antonia’s beautiful and free-spirited granddaughter. A quiet love affair ensues until one day, the girl vanishes. Over four centuries later, thirty-two year old Selim Osman, a playboy prince with a thriving real estate empire, is suddenly diagnosed with a life-threatening condition. Abandoning the mother of his unborn child, he vanishes from Istanbul without an explanation. In a Manhattan hospital, he meets Hannah, a talented artist and the daughter of a French Holocaust survivor. As their story intertwines with that of their ancestors, readers are taken back to Nazi-occupied Paris, and to a sea-side village in the Holy Land where a world of secrets is illuminated. Theirs is a love that has been dormant for centuries, spanning continents, generations, oceans, and religions. Bound by a debt that has lingered through time, they must right the wrongs of the past if they’re ever to break the shackles of their future. 
*The Debt of Tamar is a work of fiction, inspired by the life and times of Dona Gracia Nasi and Josef Nasi.