![]() This is a powerful, sometimes disturbing literary journey through the soul of a great city told by one of its great writers. Istanbul: Memories and the City by Orhan Pamuk (1952-) is an autobiographical memoir. ![]() 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. He minutely describes horrific accidents on the Bosphorus Strait and his own recurring fantasies of murder and mayhem. 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. , Pamuk writes, "is a way of looking at life that. Central to many Istanbul residents' character is the concept of hüzün Pamuk sees the slow collapse of the once powerful empire hanging like a pall over the city and its citizens. 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. ) presents a breathtaking portrait of a city, an elegy for a dead civilization and a meditation on life's complicated intimacies. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |