Istanbul

In a surprising and original blend of personal memoir and cultural history, Turkey's most celebrated novelist, Orhan Pamuk, explores his home of more than fifty years.

What begins as a portrait of the artist as a young man becomes a shimmering evocation, by turns intimate and panoramic, of one of the world's greatest cities. Beginning in the family apartment building where he was born, and still lives, Pamuk uses his family secrets to show how they were typical of their time and place. He then guides us through Istanbul's monuments and lost paradises, dilapidated Ottoman villas, back streets and waterways, and introduces us to the city's writers, artists and murderers.

Like Joyce's Dublin and Borges' Buenos Aires, Pamuk's Istanbul is a triumphant encounter of place and sensibility, beautifully written and immensely moving.