From the Nobel Prize-winning author of My Name Is Red and Snow, a
large-format, deluxe, collectible edition of his beloved memoir about
life in Istanbul, with more than 200 added illustrations and a new
introduction.
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
melancholy--or hüzün--that all Istanbullus share: the sadness that
comes of living amid the ruins of a lost empire. With cinematic
fluidity, Pamuk moves from the lives of his glamorous, unhappy parents
to the gorgeous, decrepit mansions overlooking the Bosphorus; from the
dawning of his self-consciousness to the writers and painters--both
Turkish and foreign--who would shape his consciousness of his city. Like
Joyce's Dublin and Borges' Buenos Aires, Pamuk's Istanbul is a
triumphant encounter of place and sensibility, beautifully written and
immensely moving.