Orhan Pamuk
ISBN: 9781400033881 $19.95
Paperback 400pp
Vintage | July, 2006
A shimmering evocation, by turns intimate and panoramic, of one of the world's great cities, by its foremost writer. His portrait of his city is thus also a self-portrait, refracted by memory and the melancholy that all Istanbullus share: the sadness that comes of living amid the ruins of a lost empire. With cinematic fluidity, Pamuk moves from his glamorous, unhappy parents to the gorgeous, decrepit mansions overlooking the Bosphorus; from the dawning of his self-consciousness to the writers and painters-both Turkish and foreign-who would shape his consciousness of his city. Like Joyce's Dublin and Borges' Buenos Aires, Pamuk's Istanbul is a triumphant encounter of place and sensibility, beautifully written and immensely moving.
