Istanbul
by Orhan Pamuk · first published 2003
4mentions
0recommended by
4HN commenters
2012–2016first – last mentioned
75% neutral25% critical
A shimmering evocation, by turns intimate and panoramic, of one of the world’s great cities, by its foremost writer. 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. With cinematic fluidity, Pamuk moves from 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
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…Sapiens - Yuval Noah Harari The Four Agreements - Don Miguel Ruiz The Inner Game of Tennis - W. Timothy Galleway My Gita - Devdutt Pattanaik One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez Istanbul - Orhan Pamuk The Stranger - Albert Camus
on “Ask HN: Books you read in 2016?” ↗…can´t stand(nor understand) the way writers expand the thickness of the books just adding nonsense parts to the stories. And they get rewarded by that! Pamuk´s "Black book" is a 2 inch thick book of Istanbul streets descriptions, and... that´s it. I forced myself to finish it because I thought:"there should be something else, is not possible that all this is for nothing". I was wrong.
on “If Hemingway wrote JavaScript” ↗This reminds me of Orhan Pamuk's Istanbul and the concept of hüzün. The memories of a once-great city and the collective melancholia of the people living among the ruins.
on “Flint, MI: So much lead in children’s blood, state of emergency declared” ↗Orhan Pamuk's Black Book may give an interesting introduction to public views on homoerotism in Ottoman Istanbul circa 15th. century.