This book presents the reversed version of a dictionary originally penned by the seventeenth-century dragoman Giovanni Molino, and published in 1641. Elżbieta Święcicka presents not only a reverse dictionary, but also the story behind this “user-friendly” (137) and “flesh-and-blood dictionary” (128). The book consists of two parts. The reverse dictionary comprises the second and longer part of this book. The author has employed a special computer program to reverse the dictionary. The reversal is arranged in alphabetical order in four columns. For each word, the first column lists the Turkish entry in normalized spelling (e.g., kale). The second column is the Turkish entry rendered by Molino (e.g., Kale; cf. gale). The third column gives the column number in the original dictionary (e.g., 82), and the fourth column the Italian correlate (e.g., Fortezza, 337). The reverse dictionary contains more than seven thousand entries in Turkish.

The reverse dictionary is preceded by a treatise in seven chapters on Molino and his work. The first chapter provides a technical description of the dictionary, including its known copies and provenance. Molino's intent in preparing the dictionary is discussed through his dedication to Cardinal Barberini and his preface. The second chapter provides a brief background on the seventeenth century. Starting with a discussion of transcription texts preceding Molino's Dittionario, Święcicka takes a look at the linguistic landscape. However, the author seems to have tried to squeeze too much information into a very limited space, including an outline of the historical-cultural background, Rome's interest in oriental languages, and the participation of Armenians in the cultural landscape. Such a diversity of topics in a limited scope is confusing and hard for the reader to follow. The final section of the chapter stresses the Armenian heritage of Molino and situates him in a line of Armenians with “intellectual contribution[s]” to the Turkish language (38).

The third chapter reconstructs Molino's life and his network. Here we find the fascinating story of an intellectual constantly moving through a transcultural world. His career takes him from Ankara to Rome, from Smyrna to Cairo, from Constantinople to Venice to Milan, and through Ottoman, French, and Venetian court circles. The fourth chapter is an introductory discussion of Molino's dictionary. The author, in this chapter, offers the reader some food for thought, questioning and speculating on the sources and models Molino had at his disposal. Through a list of previous word lists that reads like an annotated bibliography, the reader sees what was available and what Molino might have had access to. This chapter also provides notes on Molino's transcription system and his own statements on pronunciation. The fifth and sixth chapters explain the methods employed in the reversal process and analyze several linguistic aspects of Molino's Dittionario. The seventh and final chapter presents the author's comments about Giovanni Molino and his dictionary through references to and comparison with contemporaries.

Święcicka brings together her various discussions, most importantly the practical nature of Molino's dictionary, in her statement: “It seems that M.'s intention was to construct a kind of mixture between a ‘theoretical dictionary’ and a lexicon; a highly practical one, denoting the basic concepts (among them all 55 universal, conceptual, semantic primes), excerpted not from the Ottoman literature but from everyday language which could be used as an appendix to his short grammar” (137). Throughout her work Święcicka refers to thirty-two individual authors of transcription texts, preceding and following Molino, often in a detailed manner. As such this book will be of interest to lexicographers as well as linguists. Although the historical background is insufficient and flawed—such as dating Ahmed I to 1569 (30)—this book has a lot to offer historians, especially those working on dragomans and/or information networks. Tracing the career of Giovanni Molino, the author sheds light on seventeenth-century networks and patronage relationships. More fascinating, however, is the modern information networks that made it possible for Święcicka to uncover the identity of Giovanni Molino. This book, for me, is the story of a scholar who chased a clue for thirty years without giving up; the story of what cooperation can bring about; the story of how a man can come back to life through one historian's ceaseless efforts.