From the Nobel Prize winner and acclaimed author of My Name is Red comes a modern epic novel that tells the coming of age story of a street vendor in Istanbul and the love of his life.
Arriving in Istanbul as a boy, Mevlut Karataş is enthralled by both the old city that is disappearing and the new one that is fast being built. He becomes a street vendor, like his father, hoping to strike it rich, but luck never seems to be on Mevlut’s side. He spends three years writing love letters to a girl he has seen just once, only to elope by mistake with her sister. Although he grows to cherish his wife and the family they have together, Mevlut stumbles toward middle age as everyone around him seems to be reaping the benefits of a rapidly modernizing Turkey. Told through the eyes of a diverse cast of characters, in A Strangeness in My Mind Nobel-prize-winning author Orhan Pamuk paints a brilliant tableau of life among the newcomers who have changed the face of Istanbul over the past fifty years.
“Pamuk does for Istanbul something like what James Joyce did for Dublin. He captures not just the look and feel of the city, but its culture, its beliefs and traditions, its people and their values.” —The Washington Post
“Delightful. . . . Tremendous. . . . [Written with] virtuosic craft, intellectual richness, emotional subtlety and a feeling of freedom.” —The New York Times Book Review
“Complex, ambitious. . . . It is Pamuk’s boundless compassion that makes the life of a struggling street vendor become, on the page, as monumental and as worthy of our attention as a sultan’s.” —Anthony Marra, San Francisco Chronicle
“An unconventional love story. . . . A hymn to life’s physical and mental chaos.” —The New York Times
“A remarkable feat. . . . Light and funny. Pamuk’s perspective is generous. He takes a long view of history. The intermingling, and clashes, of cultures and peoples are part of what makes a city great, he suggests.” —Chicago Tribune
“Poignant. . . . There are no uncomplicated human beings for Pamuk, who takes as one of his principal themes here the gulf between what people say publicly and think privately.” —Los Angeles Times
“A textured and rewarding narrative.” —The Economist
“Warm and gently engrossing. . . . At its heart, this is a novel about work, love and family.” —The Sunday Times (London)
