Visiting Orhan Pamuk’s Istanbul
Travel Blog • Jim Benning • 05.21.08 | 11:05 AM ET
Nobel Prize-winning writer Orhan Pamuk’s Istanbul: Memories and the City is “the perfect literary companion” for a visit to Istanbul, Ben Quinn observes in the Guardian. The memoir evokes 1950s and ‘60s Istanbul. Writes Quinn: “[F]or those seeking to avoid the tourism trail—revolving around the “old” city and the undoubted beauties of the Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque—Pamuk reserves a special fondness for Istanbul’s lesser known quarters.”
Quinn’s top five Pamuk spots include Galata Bridge and the Bazaar District.
It’s worth noting that many readers may not recognize the Istanbul they’ve seen in Pamuk’s work.
In a 2005 review in the New York Times, Christopher de Bellaigue wrote:
In this memoir of his youth, as in the six novels he has set in the city, Istanbul bears only a fleeting resemblance to the smiling and vibrant place many Westerners know from vacationing there. Pamuk’s hometown is rarely consoling; it is more often troubled and malicious, its voice muffled and its colors muted by snowfalls that happen more often in the author’s imagination than in real life.
Related on World Hum:
* Slide Show: Rug Burn in Istanbul
* The Joy of Steam
Related on TravelChannel.com:
* Istanbul Travel Guide