Orhan Pamuk
Paperback | Pages: 466 pages Rating: 3.92 | 9365 Users | 742 Reviews
Details Of Books The Black Book
| Title | : | The Black Book |
| Author | : | Orhan Pamuk |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | Anniversary Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 466 pages |
| Published | : | July 11th 2006 by Vintage (first published March 1990) |
| Categories | : | Fiction. Asian Literature. Turkish Literature. Mystery. Cultural. Turkish. Novels |
Description In Pursuance Of Books The Black Book
A New Translation and Afterword by Maureen FreelyGalip is a lawyer living in Istanbul. His wife, the detective novel–loving Ruya, has disappeared. Could she have left him for her ex-husband or Celâl, a popular newspaper columnist? But Celâl, too, seems to have vanished. As Galip investigates, he finds himself assuming the enviable Celâl's identity, wearing his clothes, answering his phone calls, even writing his columns. Galip pursues every conceivable clue, but the nature of the mystery keeps changing, and when he receives a death threat, he begins to fear the worst.
With its cascade of beguiling stories about Istanbul, The Black Book is a brilliantly unconventional mystery, and a provocative meditation on identity. For Turkish literary readers it is the cherished cult novel in which Orhan Pamuk found his original voice, but it has largely been neglected by English-language readers. Now, in Maureen Freely’s beautiful new translation, they, too, may encounter all its riches.
Be Specific About Books During The Black Book
| Original Title: | Kara Kitap |
| ISBN: | 1400078652 (ISBN13: 9781400078653) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Characters: | Galip, Rüya, Celal |
Rating Of Books The Black Book
Ratings: 3.92 From 9365 Users | 742 ReviewsDiscuss Of Books The Black Book
A post-modern masterpiece in the vein of the best of Calvino or Borges, The Black Book is the novel in which Pamuk was able to force his literary star and create a work of art luminosity blazed forth and heralded a new star of Turkish literature; Kemal had poetry, but Pamuk has something even more important-originality.The dominant themes in the novel are ones which often recur in Pamuks novels; identity, Westernisation and Istanbul, combined with a sense of playfulness and erudition. Lets startThis book should have been better. It had a very good beginning but then really fell off. The fault is most likely both Pamuks and Freelys (the translator). The way Freely described the translation process in the Afterword (which should have been the Foreword, unlike most Forewords, which give away the entire plot and should be Afterwords), it seems as if Turkish is incredibly hard to translate into English. She also relates how beautiful Pamuks prose is. That beauty does not come through.
This book did not say anything to me; it just washed over me. Maybe because it is too familiar; you need to be not-from-Turkey to be able to see it as something deep and mysterious. Although, I am hard-pressed to understand how you can visualize anything with the meager descriptions in the book. I mean I actually know the places you know; and it was even hard for me. Same thing goes for the characters; I literally know at least one person like each character and still all of them were
I picked up this book at a library book sale - in part for the picture of the Hagia Sophia on the cover, the blurbs ("tantalizing," "splendid," "delicious"), and the promise of the exotic in Istanbul. The copy I purchased was published before Pamuk won the Nobel Prize.This is an intricate and beautifully written book. It is a detective story like Calvino's If On A Winter's Night a Traveller is a detective story. Like that story it is a reflection on writing and identity, but set in Istanbul with
A mans search for his wife and her journalist ex-husband becomes intertwined with the latters bizarre articles/columns turning this book into a bewildering hall of mirrors of Dostoevsky styled feverish monologues, storytelling sessions like a Dinesen or Potocki tale, and Borgesian labyrinths of history and literature (and fake detective tale). Each chapter is its own unit; a short story, mock essay, or monologue. This book is exasperating, annoying, thrilling, and provocative at different points
This is a massive achievement. It's quite exhausting to read as the author throws stories, characters, similies at us at a very rapid rate.What is so special about it is the way he works on several levels: he brings home what it is like to be Turkish, how Istanbul is the frontier of cultures, and how much history is there. But on another, more modernist level, he raises questions of what it is to be an author, the relationship between reader and writer, and ultimately, what defines our identity.
Painfully beautiful, intriguing and an absorbing, labyrinthine story. Will read it once again before I can make any smart comment about this book which offers many pleasures. One story inside the story is about a Prince who had discovered that the most important question in life was whether or not one could be oneself. This idea is in another level reflected in the protagonist's search for his vanishing wife which is the main plot of the novel.Sometimes I feel like reading a detective story,
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