Orhan Pamuk wordt gevierd als een verteller van Istanbul, een stad die zijn vroege schrijven vormde en zijn latere autobiografische essays inspireerde. Zijn werk duikt vaak in complexe thema's als identiteit, de kruising van westerse en oosterse culturen, en culturele botsingen, allemaal verweven door meeslepende verhalen. Pamuks stijl valt op door zijn experimentele aard, diepe karakterpsychologie en meesterlijke weergave van Turkije's verleden en heden. Zijn literaire betekenis ligt in zijn vermogen om persoonlijke ervaringen te verbinden met universele menselijke waarheden, en lezers een uniek perspectief te bieden op de complexiteit van het moderne leven.
Als haar man na negen jaar nog steeds niet is teruggekeerd uit de oorlog, gaat de mooie Sjekure op zoek naar een nieuwe echtegenoot. Haar vader heeft een geheime, uiterst controversiële opdracht gekregen van de Osmaanse sultan. Meesterschilders werken samen aan een boek voor hem, onder supervisie van Sjekures vader. Ze maken hiervoor tekeningen in westerse stijl. Wanneer een van de schilders vermoord wordt, vraagt Sjekures vader zijn neef Kara om hulp. Sjekure en Kara waren als kinderen erg verliefd op elkaar, en nu krijgt deze liefde een kans weer op te bloeien.
From Orhan Pamuk, winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature, comes the best of twenty years work. A collection of immediate relevance and timeless value, Other Colours ranges from lyrical autobiography to criticism of literature and culture, from humour to political analysis, from delicate evocations of his friendship with his daughter Ruya to provocative discussions of Eastern and Western art. Reflections on Pamuk s first passport, his first trip to Europe, his father s death, his recent court case, and the Istanbul earthquake share space with pieces on writers as various as Laurence Sterne, Dostoyevsky, Kundera, Rushdie, and Patricia Highsmith. There are additional sections on Istanbul, New York where Pamuk lived for two years and on the writing of each of his novels. Interspersed among these are photographs, paintings, some of Pamuk s own black and white drawings, as well as Looking Out the Window , a short story originally published in Granta. My Father s Suitcase, Pamuk s 2006 Nobel Lecture, a brilliant illumination of what it means to be a writer, completes the selection from the figure who is now without doubt one of international literature s most eminent and popular figures.
The culmination of decades of omnivorous collecting, Pamuk writes about things
that matter deeply to him: the psychology of the collector, the proper role of
the museum, the photography of old Istanbul, and the customs and traditions of
his beloved city.
A Strangeness In My Mind is a novel Orhan Pamuk has worked on for six years. It is the story of boza seller Mevlut, the woman to whom he wrote three years' worth of love letters, and their life in Istanbul. In the four decades between 1969 and 2012, Mevlut works a number of different jobs on the streets of Istanbul, from selling yoghurt and cooked rice, to guarding a car park. He observes many different kinds of people thronging the streets, he watches most of the city get demolished and re-built, and he sees migrants from Anatolia making a fortune; at the same time, he witnesses all of the transformative moments, political clashes, and military coups that shape the country. He always wonders what it is that separates him from everyone else - the source of that strangeness in his mind. But he never stops selling boza during winter evenings and trying to understand who his beloved really is. What matters more in love: what we wish for, or what our fate has in store? Do our choices dictate whether we will be happy or not, or are these things determined by forces beyond our control? A Strangeness In My Mind tries to answer these questions while portraying the tensions between urban life and family life, and the fury and helplessness of women inside their homes.
A luminous essay collection about loneliness, contentment, and the books and cities that have shaped the experience of a Nobel Prize winner and the acclaimed author of My Name is Red. "One of the essential writers that both East and West can gratefully claim as their own.” —The New York Times Book Review In the three decades that Nobel prize-winning author Orhan Pamuk has devoted himself to writing fiction, he has also produced scores of witty, moving, and provocative essays and articles. He engages the work of Nabokov, Kundera, Rushdie, and Vargas Llosa, among others, and he discusses his own books and writing process. We also learn how he lives, as he recounts his successful struggle to quit smoking, describes his relationship with his daughter, and reflects on the controversy he has attracted in recent years. Here is a thoughtful compilation of a brilliant novelist's best nonfiction.
What happens within us when we read a novel? And how does a novel create its unique effects, so distinct from those of a painting, a film or a poem? In this inspired, thoughtful and deeply personal book, which is based on his Charles Eliot Norton Lectures, Orhan Pamuk takes us into the worlds of the writer and the reader, revealing their intimate connections.
The streetscapes of Istanbul as photographed by Nobel prize-winning novelist Orhan Pamuk in an exquisitely printed clothbound edition The dominant color in Orhan Pamuk's new book of photographs is orange. When the Nobel-Prize-winning novelist is finished with the day's writing, he takes his camera and wanders through Istanbul's various neighborhoods, visiting the backstreets of his town, areas without tourists, spaces that seem neglected and forgotten, spaces with a particular light. This is the orange light of Istanbul's windows and streetlamps that Pamuk knows so well from his childhood--from the Istanbul of 50 years ago, as he mentions in his introduction. But Pamuk also observes that the homely, cosy orange light is slowly being replaced by a new, bright and icy white light from new lightbulbs. His photographs from the backstreets of Istanbul record and preserve the cosy effect of this old, disappearing orange light, as well as the recognition of this new white vision. Whether reflected in well-trodden snow, concentrated as a glaring ball atop a lamppost or subtly present as a diffuse haze, orange literally and aesthetically gives shape to Pamuk's pictures, which reveal to us the unseen corners of his home city.
Exploring the intricacies of the literary world, this collection of essays delves into the author's personal reflections on the art of reading and writing novels. With insights drawn from a Nobel Prize-winning perspective, the work offers a profound and thoughtful examination of storytelling, creativity, and the emotional connections forged through literature. Each essay invites readers to contemplate the transformative power of novels and the unique relationship between authors and their craft.
The Museum of Innocence - set in Istanbul between 1975 and today - tells the story of Kemal, the son of one of Istanbul's richest families, and of his obsessive love for a poor and distant relation, the beautiful Fusun, who is a shop-girl in a small boutique. In his romantic pursuit of Füsun over the next eight years, Kemal compulsively amasses a collection of objects that chronicles his lovelorn progress-a museum that is both a map of a society and of his heart. The novel depicts a panoramic view of life in Istanbul as it chronicles this long, obsessive love affair; and Pamuk beautifully captures the identity crisis experienced by Istanbul's upper classes that find themselves caught between traditional and westernised ways of being. Orhan Pamuk's first novel since winning the Nobel Prize is a stirring love story and exploration of the nature of romance. Pamuk built The Museum of Innocence in the house in which his hero's fictional family lived, to display Kemal's strange collection of objects associated with Fusun and their relationship. The house opened to the public in 2012 in the Beyoglu district of Istanbul. 'Pamuk has created a work concerning romantic love worthy to stand in the company of Lolita, Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina.' --Financial Times
