Istanbul

by Orhan Pamuk

First published 2003

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3.8(23,755)

Orhan Pamuk combines autobiography, family history and cultural portraiture to describe his first twenty-two years in Istanbul. He recalls the Pamuk apartment building, the decline of a once-wealthy family, childhood rivalries, schooling and the abandoned ambition to become a painter. Personal memory opens onto streets, ferries, wooden mansions and Bosphorus neighbourhoods shaped by the remains of the Ottoman capital.

The memoir develops the idea of hüzün, a shared melancholy produced by loss, poverty and life among imperial ruins. Pamuk considers Turkish and foreign writers, photographers and painters whose images taught Istanbul to recognise itself, while questioning the westernising gaze through which the city was often represented. His decision to write emerges from this dialogue between family identity, urban memory and the disappearing landscape of his youth.