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The White Castle
by Orhan Pamuk
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In the seventeenth century, Ottoman pirates capture a young Venetian scholar travelling from Venice to Naples. Taken to Constantinople, he is sold to Hoja, an Ottoman intellectual who resembles him physically and demands instruction in European astronomy, medicine and engineering. Master and captive collaborate during plague, court entertainments and scientific experiments while competing over who possesses the more truthful knowledge.
Hoja’s ambition carries them to the child sultan’s court and to the construction of an enormous weapon intended to break a distant enemy fortress. Years of confession, imitation and resentment make their separate identities increasingly uncertain. The narrative finally leaves unresolved which man returns to Italy, turning captivity and technological exchange into a historical fable about East, West and the stories people use to become someone else.
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