- Hardcover: 400 pages
- Publisher: Knopf; 1 edition (Jun 7 2005)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1400040957
- ISBN-13: 978-1400040957
- Product Dimensions: 15.2 x 3.8 x 22 cm
- Shipping Weight: 621 g
- Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #407,850 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
Turkish novelist Pamuk (Snow) presents a breathtaking portrait of a city, an elegy for a dead civilization and a meditation on life's complicated intimacies. The author, born in 1952 into a rapidly fading bourgeois family in Istanbul, spins a masterful tale, moving from his fractured extended family, all living in a communal apartment building, out into the city and encompassing the entire Ottoman Empire. Pamuk sees the slow collapse of the once powerful empire hanging like a pall over the city and its citizens. Central to many Istanbul residents' character is the concept of hüzün (melancholy). Istanbul's hüzün, Pamuk writes, "is a way of looking at life that... is ultimately as life affirming as it is negating." His world apparently in permanent decline, Pamuk revels in the darkness and decay manifest around him. He minutely describes horrific accidents on the Bosphorus Strait and his own recurring fantasies of murder and mayhem. Throughout, Pamuk details the breakdown of his family: elders die, his parents fight and grow apart, and he must find his way in the world. This is a powerful, sometimes disturbing literary journey through the soul of a great city told by one of its great writers. 206 photos. (June 10)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
In chapter 10, Pamuk explains the ambiguities of huzun, the Turkish term for melancholy. This single word provides a fascinating window into the culture and history of Istanbul, and even more so, into the author's memories of growing up amid the ruined glory of the Ottoman Empire. Pamuk (Snow, 2004) is blessed with the ability to recall not only the events of his childhood with clarity but also images and feelings; and the interplay of then-Orhan's naivete with now-Orhan's nuancing is truly remarkable. If readers are inclined to be suspicious of a fiction writer's memories--as well they should be--more than 200 photos and prints provide arresting physical evidence for Pamuk's metaphysical reality. Short, lyrical chapters span his early childhood through young adulthood, focusing always on his relationship with the city and its history. In a shrinking world full of rootless wanderers, it's surprisingly rare to read of someone who feels compelled to stay "in the same city, on the same street, in the same house, gazing at the same view"--and instructive to see how much can be learned thereby. Keir Graff
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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Most helpful customer reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Every sentence was worthwile,
By
This review is from: Istanbul: Memories and the City (Paperback)
I have read most of Pamuk's books, and I have to say that this was one impressed me the most. This may be in part of the fact that I am a student of history. In this book, Pamuk will take you on walks through his own city. Some walks you may find frightening, miserable and grim. But that's where the force of this story lies.A great read.
2.0 out of 5 stars
Not my cup of tea,
By
This review is from: Istanbul: Memories and the City (Paperback)
The photos of Istanbul in the 50's are wonderful but I didn't find the prose very compelling. There is no connection or sequence between the stories told along the book. Maybe the book makes sense for Pamuk fans.
5 of 8 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting if you've been there, maybe more so if you've lived there ...,
By
This review is from: Istanbul: Memories and the City (Hardcover)
This was a difficult book with which to come to grasp. Pamuk delves extensively into the cultural malaise of Instanbul - a collective grasping at faded glories that he says defines the character of its inhabitants. It strikes me that this backward looking gaze is common to empires past but that perhaps it is the relative wealth of the nation as it now stands, but this is not where the author takes this.Instead, he dwells in this place. He relates the stories of his youth and the city's past, all towards the service of reinforcing this state of gloom. I suppose in the end this quite effectively conveys the dark nature he seeks to engender, but it's hardly an attractive or inspiring tale. More like a glum self-indulgence in despair. I loved Istanbul, and as a tourist, was never exposed to this. While I may know the city and its inhabitants better after reading Memories and the City, it makes me wish I had remained in ignorance.
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