close encounter
2.No sooner have readers bidden farewell to a short, fat, dissolute sultan, Selim the Sot, than they encounter the “piratical Uskoks, a heterogeneous, but exceedingly troublesome community”. （6）Although few will resist the temptation to keep turning the pages, readers will close this monumental work exhilarated and informed, but with plenty of questions still unanswered.
