The Black Book
Orhan Pamuk. Mariner Books, $17 (408pp) ISBN 978-0-15-600329-2
Set in Istanbul, Turkish novelist Pamuk's latest is an elaborate and darkly comic meditation on identity. (June)
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Reviewed on: 06/03/1996
Genre: Fiction
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- MY NAME IS REDOrhan PamukMeshing the tropes of the tavern storyteller with the recent fashion for historical mysteries (à la The Name of the Rose and An Continue reading »
- SNOWOrhan PamukA Turkish poet who spent 12 years as a political exile in Germany witnesses firsthand the clash between radical Islam and Western ideals in this enigmatically beautiful novel. Ka's reasons for Continue reading »
- ISTANBUL: Memories and the CityOrhan PamukTurkish novelist Pamuk (Snow ) presents a breathtaking portrait of a city, an elegy for a dead civilization and a meditation on life's complicated Continue reading »
- The Museum of InnocenceOrhan PamukNobel laureate Pamuk's latest is a soaring, detailed and laborious mausoleum of love. During Istanbul's tumultuous 1970s, Kemal Bey, 30-year-old son of an upper-class family, walks Continue reading »
- The Naive and the Sentimental NovelistOrhan PamukTaking his title and inspiration from Schiller's "On Naive and Sentimental Poetry," Nobel Prize–winning Turkish novelist Pamuk (The Museum of Innocence) dissects what happens when we read a novel. Continue reading »
- My Name Is RedOrhan PamukAcclaimed Turkish novelist Pamuk offers this fascinating murder mystery set against the backdrop of 16th-century Istanbul. The story surrounds a sultan who commissions a book to celebrate his life Continue reading »
- The White CastleOrhan PamukOne of Turkey's foremost novelists explores the ambivalent relationship between master and slave in this elegant, postmodernist twist on the theme of the doppelganger. During the 17th century, a Continue reading »
- The Black BookOrhan PamukTurkish novelist Pamuk's inventive, digressive new novel is a dazzling arabesque stuffed with fantastic tales, metaphysical thought experiments, dreams, symbolic fables, absurdist humor, childhood Continue reading »
- The New LifeOrhan PamukWith its fusion of literary elegance and incisive political commentary, Pamuk's previous novel, The Black Book, drew comparisons to the works of Salman Rushdie and Don DeLillo. Here, he confirms that Continue reading »
- Other Colors: Essays and a StoryOrhan PamukThough the latest book from Nobel Prize-winning Pamuk (Istanbul, Snow) is a standard late-career essay collection, it makes clear the reasons behind the Turkish author's acclaim. Eschewing flash and Continue reading »
- Silent HouseOrhan PamukIn this first English publication of an early novel by the Nobel laureate, nonagenarian widow Fatma Darvinoglu lives in the eponymous house, a derelict villa in a seaside village near Istanbul. Continue reading »
- Silent HouseOrhan PamukNobel Prize–winner Pamuk’s spirited and spellbinding second novel, previously unpublished in English, follows a Turkish family as they come together in a fishing village outside Istanbul prior to a Continue reading »
- A Strangeness in My MindOrhan PamukThis mesmerizing ninth novel from Nobel laureate Pamuk (Silent House) is a sweeping epic chronicling Istanbul's metamorphosis from 1969 to 2012, as seen through the eyes of humble rural Continue reading »
- A Strangeness in My MindOrhan PamukReader Lee has a pleasing baritone voice and a slightly clipped British accent that’s easy to settle into. Fortunately, he doesn’t need to create numerous other voices, because even though the story Continue reading »
- NightBilge KarasuKarasu's Kafka-esque political parable, first published in his native Turkey in 1984, evokes the fear and paralysis of will that grip ordinary citizens in a modern police state. His dystopia is a Continue reading »
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