Orhan Pamuk

Orhan Pamuk depicts his characters as exquisitely and minutely as the miniaturists of Istanbul depict their horses, leaves, women and warriors, and tells his tale as meticulously as the masters of old. A murder mystery that opens with the corpse describing his death and immediate afterlife, the quest for the killer involves an exploration of the clash between the old styles of illustration and illumination of the East and the new, Venetian style of the West which threatens to corrupt and show more supplant the other. The philosophies and spirtuality and politics of style and imitation are debated and explored and illuminated through parables and tales.
Slightly heavy - wrong word - slightly slow and absorbing going for a January full of other stresses and distractions and obligations, but well worth working through, triumphant and gorgeous and ultimately sad; a potentially immortal work of art to immortalise the passing of a style of art that was supposed to be immortal. show less

“A Strangeness in My Mind” follows Mevlut Karatas as he adjusts to life in Istanbul following his migration from a small Anatolian village. Pamuk subtly weaves this personal story of a simple man who sells food on the streets of the city with descriptions of the cultural, political and physical changes that also occur in Istanbul from the 70’s to the present. Members of Melvut’s extended family living in Istanbul seem to be succeeding, often by taking advantage of the corruption that show more was prevalent in Turkey during this period. Meanwhile Melvut is somewhat melancholic about his own life. Notwithstanding his seeming failures, he derives a dreamy pleasure from seeing Istanbul at street level and interacting with its common people while selling boza. Despite some confusion about which sister he was actually wooing and eventually eloping with, Melvut also manages to develop a satisfying family life with the “wrong” sister.

Pamuk’s intention is to show how Turks come to terms with an Islamic heritage while living in an environment that is rapidly becoming Westernized and secular. His characters struggle with achieving this cultural balance, succeeding to varying extents. Not only is Melvut exposed to people who advocate for Turkey to return to its Islamic roots, but also to radicals who espouse revolution and adoption of communism. Others pay particular attention to the city’s opportunities for personal enrichment. In his travels, Melvut sees modernist trends, criminality, racial bigotry and corruption. He struggles to understand his own “strangeness” and where he fits in this mix. The reader becomes familiar with the other characters, most of whom are members of his extended family through first person monologues that Pamuk inserts into his third person narrative. This approach injects a humorous and unpretentious tone to the story.

Pamuk succeeds in evoking the setting of Istanbul during this period. He describes the crude dwellings built by the newcomers as a strategy to claim land on the hills surrounding the city and how these become replaced by sterile high-rise buildings. We experience the narrow alleys of the old city where inhabitants lower baskets to street level to obtain their boza. We follow Melvut into cemeteries where he is threatened by packs of feral dogs. We experience the tradition of inviting the boza seller up to the apartment. What results is a mood that is at times mysterious and threatening, while at others quite humane and inviting. Although the story develops slowly and lacks tension, Pamuk obviously delights in telling the story of his city and its people. This makes for an engaging and satisfying read. show less

Osman first comes across a book called The new life when he sees a pretty girl carrying it around in the university refectory. He spots a copy on a bookstall, reads it himself, and finds his life transformed in some weird way by what he reads. Osman and the lovely (but regrettably unavailable) Janan set out on a quest for Janan’s lost lover that involves criss-crossing Turkey on an apparently endless series of bus journeys, a considerable number of which end in deadly bus-collisions. show more

Repeatedly, Pamuk seems to side-step any straightforward interpretation of the book, allowing the plot to shift directions unpredictably whenever we seem to be getting close to some kind of resolution. It’s a sweetly-ironic account of young love, a study of how conspiracies and counter-conspiracies work and of how ready young people are to allow themselves to be influenced by ideas that promise to bring an escape from the everyday, a look at how the power of an idea can become detached from its originator’s intentions when it is put into a book, and it's often also a gently satirical look back at life in provincial Turkey a few decades ago. And a nostalgic homage to obsolete Turkish brand names, overnight buses, rail travel, bad films and the low-grade children’s literature of the author’s youth. But it also brings in Dante, Rilke, and a whole bunch of other apparently incongruent threads, so you need to keep your wits about you.

Puzzling, but often quite captivating. If you are looking for a book about how many angels can dance on a candy-wrapper, this is the one. show less

I will be honest and say that until about page 250 I felt I was dragging myself through the book a bit. Suddenly, and OMG moment and I was glued to it right to the end. The tears are still drying on my cheeks as I write this review. Tears for love, for loss, for change, for intentions of the heart and intentions of the word. Mevlut, the dear boza selling protagonist takes us through the streets of Istanbul over fifty years of his life. Somehow he remains pure of heart despite the dramatic show more political, religious, economic, and sociological changes which occur during his lifetime. I will not soon forget this lovely, lovely man. I have a powerful yearning to walk the streets of the Istanbul neighborhoods in which he has walked nightly for fifty years, in which he found peace with the strangeness in his mind! show less