Synopses & Reviews
One of the Best Books of the Year
The Washington Post • The Wall Street Journal • San Francisco Chronicle • Financial Times • Los Angeles Times • The Boston Globe • Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Arriving in Istanbul as a boy, Mevlut Karataş is enthralled by both the old city that is disappearing and the new one that is fast being built. He becomes a street vendor, like his father, hoping to strike it rich, but luck never seems to be on Mevlut’s side. He spends three years writing love letters to a girl he has seen just once, only to elope by mistake with her sister. Although he grows to cherish his wife and the family they have together, Mevlut stumbles toward middle age as everyone around him seems to be reaping the benefits of a rapidly modernizing Turkey. Told through the eyes of a diverse cast of characters, in A Strangeness in My Mind Nobel-prize-winning author Orhan Pamuk paints a brilliant tableau of life among the newcomers who have changed the face of Istanbul over the past fifty years.
Review
“Complex, ambitious.... It is Pamuk’s boundless compassion that makes the life of a struggling street vendor become, on the page, as monumental and as worthy of our attention as a sultan’s.” Anthony Marra, San Francisco Chronicle
Review
“Pamuk does for Istanbul something like what James Joyce did for Dublin. He captures not just the look and feel of the city, but its culture, its beliefs and traditions, its people and their values.” The Washington Post
Review
"A magnificent novel.” The Wall Street Journal
About the Author
Orhan Pamuk won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2006. His novel My Name Is Red won the 2003 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. His work has been translated into more than sixty languages.