From the Nobel Prize winner and acclaimed author of My Name is Red comes a┬аportrait of Istanbul┬аby its foremost writer, revealing the melancholy that comes of living amid the ruins of a lost empire.┬а┬а
"Delightful, profound, marvelously origina.... Pamuk tells the story of the city through the eyes of memory." тАФThe Washington Post Book World
A shimmering evocation, by turns intimate and panoramic, of one of the worldтАЩs great cities, by its foremost writer. Orhan Pamuk was born in Istanbul and still lives in the family apartment building where his mother first held him in her arms. His portrait of his city is thus also a self-portrait, refracted by memory and the melancholyтАФor h├╝z├╝nтАФthat all Istanbullus share.
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 paintersтАФboth Turkish and foreignтАФwho would shape his consciousness of his city. Like JoyceтАЩs Dublin and BorgesтАЩ Buenos Aires, PamukтАЩs Istanbul is a triumphant encounter of place and sensibility, beautifully written and immensely moving.