Book Review - Orhan Pamuk's Istanbul

This review appeared in the Times of India dated May 1st

Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk’s best selling ‘My Name is Red’ and ‘Snow’ have catapulted him centre stage onto a Western world, both politically baffled and intellectually bewildered by a rising Islamic sensibility. Western educated Pamuk, with a cultural consciousness that seems to alternate effortlessly between Flaubert and Turner, Turkish memoirist Hisar and journalist- historian Ekrem Kocu, has emerged as an interpreter par excellence, a subtler Edward Said, whose own 1978 brilliantly incisive ‘Orientalism ‘ transformed the world’s West-defined intellectual map. ‘My name is Red’ , a murder mystery set among the miniaturists of a medieval Istanbul vowed western readers with its mesmerizing mix of intrigue and aesthetic theory, as well as a tautly controlled ‘1001 nights’ structure of story and allegory. ‘Snow’ , the story of returning immigrant Turkish poet Ka’s struggle for identity , amidst the conflicting forces of a once glorious history and present day polity and poverty, went on to garner further intellectual praise for its poignancy and ironic sensibility.

Pamuk’s latest offering ‘Istanbul’, part early autobiography and part cultural memoir, is a hauntingly beautiful portrait of what is arguably, the most intriguing city in the world. ‘Istanbul ‘s opening lines, taken from late nineteenth century Turkish columnist Ahmet Rasim quote,’ The beauty of a landscape resides in its melancholy’, and indeed much of Pamuk’s urban love letter is suffused with this sentiment, one he describes as ‘huzun’, not merely the melancholy of what was once a great city but also the huzun shared as a community –“of the old Bosphorus ferries moored to deserted stations in the middle of winter…of the old booksellers who lurch from one financial crisis to the next and then wait shivering all day for a customer to appear…of the empty boathouses of the old Bosphorus villas; of the teahouses packed to the rafters with unemployed men..” Peppered with such ‘painterly’ observations and poetic reflections, Pamuk’s ‘Istanbul’ accompanied by its black and white reproductions of cobbled streets , boats and the Bosphorus and its stories of ‘Famous Fires and Other Disasters’ , is as vibrant in its own way as Kocu’s celebrated Istanbul Encyclopedia that Pamuk profiles so affectionately.

Pamuk’s personal memoirs follow a somewhat meandering narrative, with frequent digressions that range from fascinating to outright esoteric as he analyses perspective in Melling’s Istanbul paintings, tells anecdotes about Flauberts syphilis stricken anatomy and philosophizes on the ‘picturesqueness of ruins’ for prosperous other world travellers like Nerval and Gautier. A fascinating if arcane mix of geography, history, philosophy and aesthetic theory, Pamuk’s ‘Istanbul’ is a definite don’t miss for anyone ever intrigued by Istanbul and of course for all Pamuk fans.