This is a book by Orhan Pamuk, a winner of the Nobel Prize for
Literature. It is about the city of Istanbul and Pamuk's life there as a
child and as a young man.
The city of Istanbul, formerly known as Constantinople, has fascinated me since I was a child. A long and convoluted history there. I came very close to visiting it in 1994, but it didn't happen. A British friend of mine lived there in the late 90's; he complained about the crowds and traffic with little good to say about it. Well, maybe it would be more fun if he had only been a tourist there. I still hope to visit it someday, despite what he said and much of what I read in the book reviewed here.
I thought this book would be more about the city than the author's life, but it is really the opposite if you ask me. Early on, there was some insight as to how wealthier people in Istanbul lived in the middle of the 20th century, which was interesting, but later there was less of even this. The book starts off on an up note, but soon falls into a discussion of melancholy and never comes out of that. Overall, the book told of a city that was once great, but is now dark and depressing, as seen in the author's life in it.
The author seems to have had a fairly depressing late childhood to early adulthood. He tells his story in terms of the melancholy he sees everywhere in the city of Istanbul where he lives. Not exactly what one might read in a tour guide to the city. There are many interesting photographs in the book, but there are no descriptions of them, though they seem to be related to what is going on in the book at the points where they are placed; note they are all in black and white.
The book was translated from Turkish into English, and the translation was not by the author. The sentence structure made the book less than easy to get through. There were many references to things that are not commonly known (like neighborhoods of Istanbul) that were important to understanding the book, yet not explained.
Frankly, I was a little glad to get to the end. I'm not sure I'd recommend this book to just anyone.
The city of Istanbul, formerly known as Constantinople, has fascinated me since I was a child. A long and convoluted history there. I came very close to visiting it in 1994, but it didn't happen. A British friend of mine lived there in the late 90's; he complained about the crowds and traffic with little good to say about it. Well, maybe it would be more fun if he had only been a tourist there. I still hope to visit it someday, despite what he said and much of what I read in the book reviewed here.
I thought this book would be more about the city than the author's life, but it is really the opposite if you ask me. Early on, there was some insight as to how wealthier people in Istanbul lived in the middle of the 20th century, which was interesting, but later there was less of even this. The book starts off on an up note, but soon falls into a discussion of melancholy and never comes out of that. Overall, the book told of a city that was once great, but is now dark and depressing, as seen in the author's life in it.
The author seems to have had a fairly depressing late childhood to early adulthood. He tells his story in terms of the melancholy he sees everywhere in the city of Istanbul where he lives. Not exactly what one might read in a tour guide to the city. There are many interesting photographs in the book, but there are no descriptions of them, though they seem to be related to what is going on in the book at the points where they are placed; note they are all in black and white.
The book was translated from Turkish into English, and the translation was not by the author. The sentence structure made the book less than easy to get through. There were many references to things that are not commonly known (like neighborhoods of Istanbul) that were important to understanding the book, yet not explained.
Frankly, I was a little glad to get to the end. I'm not sure I'd recommend this book to just anyone.
