Istanbul: Memories and the City by Orhan Pamuk (Vintage, 2004).
Nobel Prize in Literature winner and famous native Instabullu, Orhan Pamuk, creates a portrait of his beloved city through written vignettes and sometimes bleak sketches from his childhood and through assembled historic photographs that is akin to Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist in that Pamuk focuses on the beauty in the landscape that resides in its deeply seeded melancholy or “huzun.” Istanbul, once the great center of both the Byzantine and Ottoman empires, has, in the past century, fallen far off its high pedestal, and in its secularity must define what it means to be Turkish. Because there is no overarching narrative and most chapters are bite-sized and lack action, the reading requires patience. Several chapters stand out like “Exploring the Bosphorus” and “Hazun,” while the final two chapters, about the author’s first true love and about his devoted affection for his mother, close the book on a distinctively personal note (7/10).
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