Showing results by author "Orhan Pamuk" in All Categories

At a family wedding Mevlut catches sight of a girl with whom he falls in love. After a secret courtship of letters passed via his cousin, she agrees to elope with him, and on a dark night the two come together for the first time. As they rush to catch a train to Istanbul, Mevlut realises he has been misled. But the die is cast, and the situation will determine the rest of his days. Over the next four decades in Istanbul, Mevlut works various jobs to support his loving wife and family - work that gives him a special perspective on his rapidly changing city and the people who live there.

It is a perfect spring day in Istanbul. Kemal, a wealthy heir, is about to become engaged to the aristocratic Sibel when he encounters Füsun, a beautiful shop girl. He falls in love and finds his established world of Westernized families, opulent parties, society gossip and dining room rituals is shattered.

1901. Night draws in. With the stealth of a spy vessel, the royal ship Azizye approaches the famous vistas of Mingheria. 'An emerald build of pink stone.' The 29th state of the ailing Ottoman Empire. The ship carries Princess Pakize, the daughter of a deposed sultan, her doctor husband, and the Royal Chemist, Bonkowski Pasha. Each of them holds a separate mission. Not all of them will survive the weeks ahead. Because Mingheria is on the cusp of catastrophe. There are rumours of plague—rumours some in power will try to suppress. Plague is not the only killer.

The year is 1992. Ka, a poet and political exile, returns to Turkey as a journalist, assigned to investigate troubling reports of suicide in the small and mysterious city of Kars on the Turkish border. The snow is falling fast as he arrives, and soon all roads are closed. There's a 'suicide epidemic' amongst young religious women forbidden to wear their headscarves.

In Istanbul, in the late 1590s, the Sultan secretly commissions a great book: a celebration of his life and his empire, to be illuminated by the best artists of the day – in the European manner. But when one of the miniaturists is murdered, their master has to seek outside help. Did the dead painter fall victim to professional rivalry, romantic jealousy or religious terror?

The moving story of a Turkish family gathering in the shadow of the impending military coup of 1980. In an old mansion in a village near Istanbul, a widow awaits the annual visit of her grandchildren. She has lived in the village for decades, ever since her husband, an idealistic young doctor, first arrived to serve the poor fishermen. Now mostly bedridden, she is attended by her faithful servant Recep, a dwarf - and her late husband's illegitimate son.

Turkey's greatest living novelist guides us through the monuments and lost paradises, dilapidated Ottoman villas, back streets, and waterways of Istanbul - the city of his birth and the home of his imagination.

The Black Book is Orhan Pamuk's tour de force, a stunning tapestry of Middle Eastern and Islamic culture which confirmed his reputation as a writer of international stature. Richly atmospheric and Rabelaisian in scope, it is a labyrinthine novel suffused with the sights, sounds and scents of Istanbul, an unforgettable evocation of the city where East meets West, and a boldly unconventional mystery that plumbs the elusive nature of identity, fiction, interpretation and reality.

In the 17th century, a young man sailing from Venice to Naples is taken prisoner by pirates and delivered to the Ottoman Empire in Constantinople. There he is forced into slavery and left in the custody of a brilliant Turkish inventor known as Hoja - 'master' - a man who is his exact double. In the years that follow, the slave instructs his master in Western science and technology, from medicine to pyrotechnics.

Other Colours is a collection of immediate relevance and timeless value, ranging 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. It also covers Pamuk's recent, high profile, court case.

Pamuk draws on Friedrich Schiller's famous distinction between "naive" poets-who write spontaneously, serenely, unselfconsciously-and "sentimental" poets: those who are reflective, emotional, questioning, and alive to the artifice of the written word. Harking back to the beloved novels of his youth and ranging through the work of such writers as Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Stendhal, Flaubert, Proust, Mann, and Naipaul, he explores the oscillation between the naive and the reflective, and the search for an equilibrium, that lie at the center of the novelist's craft.

The New Life by Orhan Pamuk is a spiritual journey into the arid heartland of Turkey, in the name of love, literature and freedom. 'I read a book one day, and my whole life was changed.' So begins The New Life, Orhan Pamuk's fabulous road novel about a young student who yearns for the life promised by a dangerously magical book. He falls in love, abandons his studies, turns his back on home and family, and embarks on restless bus trips through the provinces in pursuit of an elusive vision.

From the Nobel Prize winner and best-selling author of Snow and My Name Is Red, a fable of fathers and sons. On the outskirts of a town 30 miles from Istanbul, a master well digger and his young apprentice are hired to find water on a barren plain. As they struggle in the summer heat, excavating metre by metre, the two will develop a filial bond neither has known before - not the poor middle-aged bachelor nor the middle-class boy whose father disappeared after being arrested for politically subversive activities.

Un joven científico indiano es capturado por piratas cuando viaja de Venecia a Nápoles. Poco después es vendido como esclavo a un sabio turco deseoso de conocer los avances científicos de Occidente. Ambientado en la Turquía del siglo XVII, este audiolibro narra la extraordinaria historia de estos dos hombres, que curiosamente guardan un gran parecido físico. Escucha ahora esta fascinante exploración de la identidad, del fatídico pulso entre tradición y modernidad, y del destino del intelectual a través de la relación que surge entre ambos personajes.

«Un día la hermosa mujer de un hombre que la quería muchísimo lo abandonó. Él empezó a buscarla. Allá donde fuera por la ciudad encontraba su rastro pero no a ella...» Así cuenta su caso Galip, un joven abogado que vive en Estambul y quiere reencontrarse con Rüya, su esposa y prima. Sospecha que ha huido con otro hombre, con un hombre que bien podría ser alguien muy cercano, casi tan cercano como su propio hermanastro, un periodista excéntrico que también ha desaparecido. En su persecución alucinada, Galip recorre día y noche las calles de un Estambul real y fabuloso.

Kann man die falsche Frau heiraten und trotzdem die große Liebe finden? Mevlut ist elf, als er Ende der 60er Jahre von einem Dorf in Anatolien nach Istanbul kommt. Abends wandert er durch die Altstadt und bietet Boza feil, ein leicht alkoholisches Hirsegetränk. Auf der Hochzeit seines Cousins verliebt er sich in die jüngere Schwester der Braut.

La historia de amor de Kemal, un joven miembro de la burguesía de Estambul, y su pariente lejana Füsun es una extraordinaria novela sobre la pasión rayana en la obsesión. Lo que comienza como una aventura inocente y desinhibida, evoluciona pronto hacia el amor sin límites, y después, cuando Füsun desaparece, hacia una profunda melancolía. En medio del vértigo que le producen sus sentimientos, Kemal no tarda mucho en descubrir el efecto calmante que tienen sobre él los objetos que alguna vez pasaron por las manos de ella.

El Sultán ha pedido a los artistas más reputados del país un gran libro que celebre las glorias de su reino. Su tarea será iluminar esa obra al estilo europeo. Pero como el arte figurativo puede ser considerado una ofensa al Islam, el encargo se convierte a todas luces en una proposición peligrosa. La élite gobernante no debe conocer el alcance ni la naturaleza de ese proyecto, y el pánico estalla cuando uno de los miniaturistas desaparece. La única pista para resolver el misterio -¿quizá un crimen?- reside en las miniaturas inacabadas.

Estambul es un retrato, en ocasiones panorámico y en otras íntimo y personal, de una de las ciudades más fascinantes de la Europa que mira a Asia. Pero es también una autobiografía, la del propio Orhan Pamuk. La historia da comienzo con el capítulo de su infancia, donde Pamuk nos habla sobre su excéntrica familia y su vida en un polvoriento apartamento - «los apartamentos Pamuk», así los denomina - en el centro de la ciudad.

En mitad de una tormenta de nieve, Ka, un periodista turco recién llegado de un largo exilio político en Alemania, se desplaza a la remota ciudad de Kars, al nordeste de Turquía. Lo que encuentra es un lugar conflictivo: han asesinado al alcalde y todo apunta a que los islamistas van a ganar las inminentes elecciones, hay un terrible temor al terrorismo kurdo y una ola de suicidios de chicas a las que se les ha prohibido llevar la cabeza cubierta a la escuela.