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The Black Book

by Orhan Pamuk, Maureen Freely (Translator)

3.75 · rating details · 1,546 ratings · 209 reviews

A New Translation and Afterword by Maureen Freely

Galip 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, ans...more

Paperback, 466 pages

Published July 11th 2006 by Vintage (first published 1990)

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Jan 20, 2011

Adam rated it

Shelves: noir, horror-disguised-as-literature, heart-of-darkness, black-comedy

A man’s search for his wife and her journalist ex-husband becomes intertwined with the latter’s 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 poin...more

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Apr 03, 2010

matt rated it

Shelves: fictions-of-the-big-it, worldly-lit, re-readers

this is a rare example of a reread for me. I don't reread books very often, not because I don't want to, blahblahblah....

My experience of reading this one was a good example of a certain kind of reader's disease. The kind where even though you are trying to focus your attention on the story, the language, etc your eyes start to water and you kind of glaze over in your mind, turning pages and sort of dimly registering the story. It's not "reading",per se, but it's not...more

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Mar 29, 2008

Rafael rated it

Otro libro negro

Este no es el de Papini, llamado así porque está escrito en una época que el mismo Papini, calificó de negra; la de la segunda guerra mundial. Este segundo libro negro está escrito por Orhan Pamuk y son más de 600 páginas de desafiante lectura de tristeza y soledad. Su negrura es la del dolor del autor que pierde a su mujer. Está construido alrededor de este hecho, la desaparición, huida, partida o pérdida de la mujer, no explicada, en una carta que deja al marido.
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Dec 30, 2011

Carl rated it

Orhan Pamuk is Turkey's most well-known author, internationally, and The Black Book is proclaimed by The Times Literary Supplement as his masterpiece. It was first published in 1991 and translated into English shortly after that. In an Afterword to this volume the current translator explains the vagaries of translating Turkish into English, and that she did this updated translation because the earlier version failed to reflect the flow of the Turkish language. Also, by being a personal friend of...moreOrhan Pamuk is Turkey's most well-known author, internationally, and The Black Book is proclaimed by The Times Literary Supplement as his masterpiece. It was first published in 1991 and translated into English shortly after that. In an Afterword to this volume the current translator explains the vagaries of translating Turkish into English, and that she did this updated translation because the earlier version failed to reflect the flow of the Turkish language. Also, by being a personal friend of the author, she and he were able to go over the translation together to keep it true to what he was saying and how.

The book begins as a mystery. Galip, a young Turkish lawyer, returns home one evening to pick up his wife, Ruya, for a family dinner, and finds in her place a note from her saying that she has left him and will be in touch. The mystery is discovering why she left and where she is now. That mystery, however, turns out to be fairly easily solved by him; she is with his uncle and her step-brother, Celal, all of whom grew up together in the same apartment building, The City of Hearts Apartments, in Istanbul. As soon as Galip discovers this, but before he has found them, Celal is shot to death in front of the police station by a jealous husband, not Galip, and Galip's wife Ruya is accidentally shot by the police in the crossfire.

That mystery and its solution, however, remains a backdrop for the primary story. Early in the book, the author gives us the clue that the “black book” refers to a detective story, specifically one of his wife's books that Galip finds hidden in her closet. But much later in the book, when he is describing the facing murals in the entrance to an entertainment palace, he notes that the “black book” in the mural which mirrors the other mural is “a book of two parts, two meanings and two stories.” So what is the second story and the second meaning? The real detective story for Galip, and the real mystery story of the book, is that of finding out who he himself is. He does this in the process of searching for Ruya and Celal, as he wanders through two different labyrinths: the streets of Istanbul, the physical labyrinth, and the stories of Celal, the labyrinth of words.

Galip's searches through the streets of Istanbul lead him to places he has never been before, and lead him to discoveries about his city and the Turks who lived in it that he had not really known before. His search through the streets keeps circling the City of Hearts Apartments, where he and Celal and Ruya grew up together, and which formed the center of Celal's writings. Celal, for the past thirty years has been a newspaper columnist with a daily column in which he tells the stories about his family, his neighbors, and Istanbul. Galip has been a faithful reader of those daily columns, and he returns to Celal's apartment to read all of those columns for clues as to where his wife Ruya and Celal might be. What happens instead is, that in the reading, he discovers himself. Specifically, he discovers that he is a writer, and has enough to say himself, that he becomes the writer of Celal's columns before he is found and continuing after he is dead.

The more intriguing question is why Galip faces the challenge of finding out who he really is. One answer is given to him by Mehmet, an obsessed fan of Celal's who has read and memorized every word he has ever written. He keeps calling Galip on Celal's telephone thinking that he is talking with Celal. Mehmet asserts that the real mystery Celal has been driving his readers toward for all of the years of his writing is that: “No one in this country can ever be himself. To live in an oppressed, defeated country is to be someone else.” Galip's problem is that of every citizen of Turkey, and that is one audience Pamuk is addressing.

Above all else, this is a book about stories, and their roles in our lives. Celal is the writer of stories and Ruya is the reader of stories. Apparently she does nothing else with her days but read detective stories. Celal's stories, the newspaper columns that he as been writing for 30 years, the writing of which are eventually taken over by Galip himself, constitute the bulk of the stories in this book. These stories about Celal's family and neighbors and friends and enemies for the first half of the book appear as alternating chapters with those of Galip's search. Then there are the stories Galip discovers in his search for Celal and Ruya: stories of lovers reading about lost lovers in a sequence of stories within stories, “The lovers in the third story would have fallen in love while reading a fourth, and the lovers in the fourth story while reading a fifth;” the story of the Grand Pasha, intentionally and specifically patterned after Dostoyevsky's “The Grand Inquisitor” story from The Brothers Karamazov; and the story of the prince who spent a decade preparing to become a ruler of his people by telling his stories to a scribe so that he might know himself. All of these stories, and in fact everything that has ever been written, are called dreams by the author, “everything that had ever been written, even the greatest and most authoritative texts in the world, were about dreams, not real life, dreams conjured up by words,” and the stories are told by individuals to become themselves. But the stories do not define the person, rather Pamuk asserts on one of the final pages of the book that “Only when a man has run out of things to say, only when he has lost all memory of his past, his books, and memory itself, only when he has plunged into that deep silence will he hear---rising from the depths of his soul, from the infinitely dark labyrinths of his being---the true voice that will allow him to become himself.” That is an incredible statement for a novelist to make. (less)

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May 20, 2008

Martin rated it

This was the first book I have read by Orhan Pamuk...apparently, it is not his best known...described as a "cult classic" by the Times Of London...and it appears to have come into translation much later than his other works. The story is s a rather bizarre "mystery" focusing on themes of identity, loss and isolation, amongst other things...and while Pamuk is obviously an amazing stylist (they don't tend to give out Noble Prizes willy-nilly), this particular book seems to have...more

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Nov 06, 2007

John rated it

Shelves: turkey, nobel-laureates

I hope that Orhan Pamuk really enjoyed writing The Black Book, because I definitely did not enjoy reading it.

It is ostensibly the story of Celal, a columnist for a major Turkish daily who has disappeared or ran away, told through the eyes of the his friend and brother-in-law, Galip. When Galip’s pulp detective novel-loving wife (Celal’s sister) disappears as well, Galip turns into something of a detective himself, and the plot thickens. And then, it slows to a tedious crawl.

...moreI hope that Orhan Pamuk really enjoyed writing The Black Book, because I definitely did not enjoy reading it.

It is ostensibly the story of Celal, a columnist for a major Turkish daily who has disappeared or ran away, told through the eyes of the his friend and brother-in-law, Galip. When Galip’s pulp detective novel-loving wife (Celal’s sister) disappears as well, Galip turns into something of a detective himself, and the plot thickens. And then, it slows to a tedious crawl.

Whatever the story is here, it becomes something of an afterthought, taking a back seat to page after page of postmodern quasi-philosophical musings on the nature of identity. The plot pulls its head up out of the ground from time to time, introducing a few new twists and intrigues which, were they part of a tighter, more focused novel may actually have been interesting, perhaps even thrilling. But as it was they just ended up getting lost in the larger symphony of postmodern tangents whose meaning or purpose in this novel I almost certainly did not fully understand. Man, this was a tough slog of a read.

With all that being said, though, now that some time has elapsed since I read it last year, I can look back with the sugar-coated spectacles of hindsight and identify some things about it that I eventually came to appreciate, such as the portraits of some of the quirky minor characters, and the overall structure of the novel, which is punctuated with the columns of the missing columnist, columns which are eventually ghost-written by Galip, who takes up the pen when he realizes Celal will not return.

I also enjoyed some of the descriptive atmospheric passages about Istanbul, where Pamuk sort-of poetically depicts the various neighborhoods his protagnist travels through, from the seedy and worn to the posh and comfortable. There are also some pretty memorable passages from Celal’s columns, including a little fantasia about what lies at the bottom of the Bosporus, a passage that ended up being one of the most memorable of the entire novel.

I read this book during a trip to Turkey (yes, I was one of *those* people), which included a few days in Istanbul, and something about being in the place where a novel is set does add something meaningful to the experience, even if it is an excruciating one at the time.(less)

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Dec 12, 2008

Francisco rated it

La memoria de Orhan Pamuk (por Cecilia Dreymuller, Diario El País, 25/01/02)

En Estados Unidos, donde suelen anticiparse las nuevas tendencias de nuestra deslumbrante vida moderna, advierten ahora en Internet contra la lectura de obras literarias complejas: 'Asegúrese de tener tiempo y energía antes de empezar una novela de Pamuk. Cada uno de sus libros es un puzle para el lector y suelen ser muy difíciles de leer y entender. Hay frases que se alargan hasta 8 o 10 líneas'. Una crítica...moreLa memoria de Orhan Pamuk (por Cecilia Dreymuller, Diario El País, 25/01/02)

En Estados Unidos, donde suelen anticiparse las nuevas tendencias de nuestra deslumbrante vida moderna, advierten ahora en Internet contra la lectura de obras literarias complejas: 'Asegúrese de tener tiempo y energía antes de empezar una novela de Pamuk. Cada uno de sus libros es un puzle para el lector y suelen ser muy difíciles de leer y entender. Hay frases que se alargan hasta 8 o 10 líneas'. Una crítica del periódico The Nation se expresa de manera algo más diferenciada, aunque tampoco tenga en gran estima la competencia literaria de los norteamericanos: 'Pamuk pone a sus lectores en el límite de lo que probablemente estén dispuestos a aceptar'.

Desde luego, entrar en el laberinto borgiano de casi seiscientas páginas de El libro negro es una experiencia límite: puede que algunos lectores sean incapaces de soltarlo en 12 horas, puede que empiecen a interesarse por la mística sufí o que quieran aprender cómo los hurufíes descifraban las letras que Alá imprimió en el rostro de cada ser humano. Como mínimo quedarán enganchados de la capacidad de fabulación de un narrador compulsivo, y querrán leer más historias de gente que cuenta historias que conducen, infaliblemente, a nuevas historias. 'Eran las historias las que le mantenían en pie, las historias que descubría gracias a su intuición como los objetos que un ciego reconoce gracias a su tacto. (...) No tenía la menor duda de que el mundo y la gente a su alrededor también podían mantenerse en pie sólo gracias a sus historias'.
Orhan Pamuk (Estambul,

1952), el escritor turco contemporáneo más reconocido internacionalmente, ha presentado con su quinta novela una obra densa, vibrante y pluridimensional, a la altura de las grandes novelas del siglo XX. Igual que Paradiso, Rayuela o Ulises, crea un universo propio intrincadísimo con el pretexto de una búsqueda. Acompañamos a Galip, un tímido abogado, durante una semana en la que sigue el rastro de su adorada esposa Rüya, desaparecida junto a su hermanastro, el famoso columnista Celâl Salim. Y ya estamos en medio del más fascinante embrollo metaliterario, porque los personajes mismos, tanto el héroe involuntario como los fantasmales desaparecidos, forman parte de las reminiscencias literarias enciclopédicas que se dan cita en esta novela. Celâl es trasunto ficcional del poeta y místico sufí Mevlâna Celâleffin, más conocido en Europa como Rumi; Galip remite al jeque Galip, autor del poema místico Hüsn y Ashk, cuya historia transcurre paralela a la construcción de la novela. Y las pistas a seguir se hallan en las columnas del admirado pariente -insertadas en capítulos alternos como complemento a la intriga-, señalando con citas el camino de salida en un juego de espejos, de reflejos literarios de todas las épocas.

Las mil y una peripecias del confuso protagonista se insertan en el escenario de la gran urbe. Galip recorre incansablemente las calles, bazares y tugurios de Estambul, un moloc violento, oscuro, imprevisible, desparramado sobre siete colinas y dividido por el Bósforo entre Europa y Asia. La metrópoli escindida es, sin duda, la segunda protagonista de la novela, ya que representa en su orografía el telón de fondo idóneo para tematizar una de las preocupaciones principales del autor: el enfrentamiento entre tradición y modernidad, entre Oriente y Occidente. Igual que en su novela histórica El castillo blanco (1991), en la que un ingeniero aprende técnicas de construcción bélica de su esclavo italiano, o en su más reciente obra, Mi nombre es Rojo (2001), sobre las intrigas en la corte osmana del siglo XV por la defensa de la pintura clásica árabe contra las influencias de los pintores venecianos, trata también El libro negro de la eterna antinomia que corroe la sociedad turca. Pamuk introduce aquí soslayadamente un elemento político en la trama, estableciendo a través del conspirativo personaje en la sombra -el camaleónico Celâl- la relación con el golpe militar de 1980. Los conspiradores se sirven del histórico antagonismo para sus fines radicalizadores: 'Oriente y Occidente se repartían las dos mitades del mundo: se oponían completamente el uno al otro, eran lo contrario, lo opuesto, como el bien y el mal, lo blanco y lo negro, el ángel y el diablo. Era absolutamente imposible que, como creían algunos soñadores, esos dos universos se entendieran y vivieran en paz. Uno de los dos universos sería siempre superior, sería el amo, y el otro se vería obligado a ser su esclavo'.

Cuando un libro es tan completo, se puede permitir alguna flaqueza -pensemos en la precariedad de la página perfecta de Borges-. En este caso son los excesos digresivos, que el autor, por cierto, no se corta en defender, apoyándose, por supuesto, en citas: 'Si tengo un defecto, es el de divagar' (tomado supuestamente de una obra con el título esclarecedor de Disculpas y burlas, de Birón Bajá). Leer es hacerse poco a poco con la memoria del autor, comprende Galip mientras va leyendo los miles de artículos de Celâl, el genio de la retentiva que comparó su memoria con un jardín -un jardín que desgraciadamente ha comenzado a secarse-. Para cultivarlo contaba historias: reales, inventadas, copiadas de libros, vistas en el cine. Éste es el irresistible material del que está hecho El libro negro. El lector se sentirá fascinado al entrar en el hermoso jardín de la memoria de Orhan Pamuk.

Fuente: http://www.elpais.com/articulo/narrativa...(less)

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Jul 27, 2011

Kaleidoscopic added it

The Black Book isn't an easy read by any means, and whilst it sealed Pamuk's reputation as a brilliant author in his home country of Turkey, for the Western reader, it probably isn't the best book to start with if you are un-initiated to Pamuk's writing. It requires quite a lot of concentration, but is worth the effort, as the pace picks up in the second half as the main character, Galip, becomes consumed in locating his missing wife, Ruya and his missing journalist Uncle, Celal. Galip slowly a...more

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Oct 02, 2010

Tchatchke rated it

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Jun 29, 2010

Steve rated it

Remember those Magic Eye pictures that were popular back in the 90’s? If you stared at what looked like random dots or patterns in just the right way, forcing your eyes apart from their usual angled focus, a hidden 3-D image would suddenly pop into view. Some of them were pretty cool. If you were like me, though, it took a while to get it right. I remember moving the picture back and forth, commanding my eyes not to cross as it got closer to my nose and trying to hold that same angle as I mo...moreRemember those Magic Eye pictures that were popular back in the 90’s? If you stared at what looked like random dots or patterns in just the right way, forcing your eyes apart from their usual angled focus, a hidden 3-D image would suddenly pop into view. Some of them were pretty cool. If you were like me, though, it took a while to get it right. I remember moving the picture back and forth, commanding my eyes not to cross as it got closer to my nose and trying to hold that same angle as I moved it back out. Finally, it worked. The hidden fish (or whatever it was) came into focus, like it was floating off the page.

I kept thinking The Black Book might amount to the same thing. If I could just train my view a certain way, the hidden meaning would emerge. I tried all the harder because the protagonist, Galip, seemed to be doing the same thing. Only he was looking into a mirror. You see, Galip was suffering an identity crisis. It was easy to understand why. His wife, Ruya, disappeared one day with only a short note to explain herself. At the same time her half-brother, Celal, a celebrated columnist in Istanbul, went missing as well, presumably with her. Celal was Galip’s older cousin, a man he greatly admired. Galip’s own life as a lawyer was colorless compared to Celal’s. As a writer, Celal was acclaimed by his many readers for his allegories and mystical tales about Turkey’s cultural identity. But why would the two of them go off without him? How does the view Galip has of himself change in light of this? He spends most of the rest of the book trying to find them, but also trying to find his true self. If anything, though, he begins to see himself through Celal’s lenses.

The book is educational. It’s also structured in an interesting way, alternating chapters that are first an omniscient narrator’s account centering on Galip and then columns written by Celal. Then there was a convergence of sorts near the end that I won’t go into for fear of spoiling things.

Even a poor student of history (like me) can appreciate the parallels between personal and national identity that played out in this book. It was set in the early 80’s and was, in a way, a debate about East vs. West, old ways vs.new, and maybe Islam vs. Hollywood. Istanbul, I’m guessing, was as conflicted a place as any when it came to these opposites. They were still sorting out Ataturk’s march towards modernity.

Unfortunately, my search for the magic focus got to be tedious. The book was dense with descriptions that might appeal to anyone who has visited Istanbul, but probably won’t to those who haven’t. The main points seemed belabored, too. I’m not saying it should have been Twitterized, but a good editor might have found 100 pages to cut. Plus, once I did see the picture (if I truly did), its impact underwhelmed me. Assuming I understood the premise, to know or become your true self requires isolation from any outside influences. But then what could you draw on to form your eclectic self? Do closed societies with closed minds achieve a compensating inner purity? As my dysphemistic way of phrasing the question already suggests, I’m doubtful.
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Jun 09, 2010

Lindsey rated it

Despite being considered Pamuk’s most imaginative and controversial book, I didn’t enjoy reading this most of the time. This appears to be a detective novel on the surface, but soon becomes a dense commentary on Turkish identity with little—and arguably insignificant—plot. This would be tolerable if the book were shorter. The story of Galip and Ruya quickly becomes shadowed by the multitude of Turkish myths, legends, and historical narratives, which present the reader with a very detailed—and o...moreDespite being considered Pamuk’s most imaginative and controversial book, I didn’t enjoy reading this most of the time. This appears to be a detective novel on the surface, but soon becomes a dense commentary on Turkish identity with little—and arguably insignificant—plot. This would be tolerable if the book were shorter. The story of Galip and Ruya quickly becomes shadowed by the multitude of Turkish myths, legends, and historical narratives, which present the reader with a very detailed—and often confusing—impression of Istanbul and its ancient history, while making many references to Turks trying (and arguably failing) to integrate and embrace the Western intellect.
Galip is an insignificant lawyer living in Istanbul with his wife and first cousin, Ruya. Ruya is obsessed with Western detective novels and, as the couple have no children, spends her days reading them and sometimes translating them into Turkish. Galip and Ruya live a quiet life close to their large extended family, including Ruya’s half brother, Celal, who is a famous columnist for an Istanbul newspaper. One day Galip comes home to discover his wife has left him, leaving only a very short note. Galip sets off to find her and bring her home, visiting their favorite places, contacting her friends and family, and even calling on her ex-husband, with whom Ruya used to be a militant leftist activist. With no results, Galip attempts to seek out his cousin and Ruya’s half-brother Celal, but discovers that he is also missing. Galip reasons that they have gone into hiding together and sets off to find them, looking for clues and connections that will point him in the right direction. He begins with Celal’s columns, believing that they contain hidden messages about where he is hiding. Galip visits a number of bizarre places, including a brothel filled with imitation Turkish movie stars, a mosque under which a small child is thought to be living, and the workshop of a mannequin maker, who has thousands of dummies replicating Istanbul’s inhabitants entombed in tunnels underneath the city. This search eventually leads Galip to Celal’s apartment—which is the one he and Ruya grew up in and Celal has eerily kept identical—where he lives for the remainder of the book.
Galip begins to see himself as a detective in one of Ruya’s novels, and believes that she and Celal are leaving him clues for him to find them. As he looks though Celal’s books, past columns, letters, and other belongings, Galip begins to take on Celal’s identity—he even begins to write columns like Celal, wear his clothing, and be recognized as Celal on the telephone. A fanatical fan of Celal’s begins to call constantly, pleading to meet with Celal, and Galip agrees to do so. He also discovers that Celal had an affair, and the man who is calling is her husband. He agrees to meet him—as well as the woman, who thinks that Celal wants to reconcile their relationship—and Galip finds out that this man has been following him, believing he will lead him to Celal. The story ends with Celal’s murder and Ruya never being found, and the murderer left unidentified.
This novel, like most of Pamuk to my understanding, is focused on the identity of the modern Turk and how it differs from the Ataturk Turks. The true identities of Galip and Celal are not overt—the two men have always wanted to be someone else; Galip wants to be Celal, and Celal wants to be the man that his family and readers believe him to be. Although the reader never meets Celal, past columns of his are alternated with chapters of the story, allowing the reader a glimpse into Celal’s mind and into Turkish culture. Celal is smart and likable. Celal’s columns contain a great deal of historical, religious, and philosophical short stories which serve to teach the reader about Turkey. Some of these stories include that of the great poet Rumi and the father of modern Turkey, Ataturk, as well as numerous references to Islam and the Ottomans. These stories, juxtaposed against the chapters of Galip’s stories, illustrate the ways in which Western culture—the culture Galip and Ruya embrace—has swiftly destroyed the culture depicted in Celal’s columns. Galip, at one point, visits a brothel that has prostitutes who emulate Turkish movie stars who are, in turn, poor imitations of Western movie stars. Pamuk uses this scene to demonstrate how Western ideals and culture have rendered even the prostitutes of Istanbul inauthentic.
Perhaps the most latent example of the influence of the West on Turkish identity is the catacombs of mannequins underneath the streets of Istanbul. Galip and a group of Western tourists take a tour of these underground passages, which contain what the creator calls “real Turks”. Some of these mannequins had once been in the store windows of the streets, but were forced to retire when the shops began carrying Western clothes and Western models to wear them. Now, they are underground, because the creator “…realized that [Turkish:] history could only survive underground, that the underground itself was a sign of the imminent collapse above…” (191). They serve to illustrate the ways Western culture has usurped even the identities of fake humans; even imitations of the Turks are no longer Turkish.
The story of Galip, Ruya, and Celal appears to be almost an unimportant part of The Black Book and only a vehicle through which Pamuk presents the readers with an understanding of the modern Turkish identity and the decay of Turkish culture at the hands of the West. First, Pamuk spends a great deal of time describing the edifices, landscape, and people of Istanbul, eliciting an image of a very old city that is slowly dying and falling apart. Pamuk takes great pains to describe the tired faces of the people on the street, and the broken streets and cracked buildings ad nausea um, demonstrating an exhausted society that has practically given up. The “real Turks” in the tunnels visited by Galip are also secretly decomposing, mimicking the more latent decline of the Turks above them, who are ignorant of their deteriorating identity. Pamuk uses this, as well as the descriptions of the decay of these tunnels, to emphasize the decline of Istanbul, culturally and physically.
In the end of the novel, Galip and Celal are indiscernible and Galip consumes Celal’s identity completely. The theme of questionable identity endures when the reader finds that Celal’s murderer is not identified and he must make assumptions for himself. It is reasonable to suggest that Galip overtaking Celal’s identity and occupation is Pamuk’s way of illustrating the capitulation of Turkish culture to Western culture; Galip clearly symbolizes progressive Western ideals, while Celal clings to the Istanbul of the past. Although Galip takes on Celal’s identity, he devours it, rather than integrates it. Celal and his Istanbul are lost.

Galip never for a second thinks that he is crazy for his conspiracy theorizing. I think I hate this, but am not entirely sure. In the grand scheme it illustrates how crazy he really is, making the reader question whether anything in the novel is real, and if Galip really is Celal, has a split personality, etc. There are no answers in this novel. I've never really been a fan of loose ends.

Pamuk has created a dense, overwhelming narrative of Turkish history and culture that, to a non-Turk, is difficult to comprehend during the first reading, and demands great effort to read and remember. While the stories within the story are fascinating and mystical (some way cooler than the actual story contain in the novel. Perhaps purposely?), the weak plot fails to carry them in a way that is memorable to the reader, making the novel appear more like a non-fiction collection of history and legends. Pamuk is indeed a talented writer, with prose that is complicated, poetic, but perhaps having a little too much descriptive text, and his penchant for ambiguity of plot and character development makes him almost too postmodern. If you’re into the nontraditional structure, then you might like this more than I did. Pamuk succeeds in thoroughly introducing the reader to Turkish culture, history, philosophy, and religion, with highly engaging pieces, but makes the book difficult to digest as a whole.(less)

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Feb 27, 2010

Tim rated it

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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 ...more

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Oct 27, 2009

Gerald rated it

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Jan 29, 2012

Dilyana Georgieva rated it

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Shelves: Балканска-balkanic

От Шехерезада до Павич, между детективския роман, мистерията и една особена мистичност на източната приказка с малко политика, с много любов, със сериозност, ирония и хумор за националната и общочовешка идентичност Орхан Памук наплита история в история с услаждаща се сладкодумност, която неусетно ни привежда през страниците.
„Човек единствено като разказва истории може да бъде верен на себе си," а Памук потъва в памучната мекота на своите истории, за да бъде толкова непоправимо себе с...more

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Aug 29, 2009

John rated it

This is the best Pamuk novel I've read, and it is the one that made his reputation in Turkey. It was not as widely-known to English-language readers as two of his subsequent novels ("My Name Is Red" and "Snow") because of a more difficult translation published in 1995. This newer translation is by Pamuk's close English-language collaborator Maureen Freely, and was published in 2006 shortly before Pamuk won the Nobel Prize.

The setting is Istanbul shortly before th...more

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Aug 06, 2011

Rodrigo rated it

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What can I say? I loved it at the beginning, but then it became so repetitive, so illogical... Galip could have been some of the deepest characters ever, but there are moments he seems so dummy... The issue of "being someone else instead of being one's self" is really deep and interesting, and although the story is brilliantly written, it never got to the point of being a book you can put down. In fact, putting it down was sometimes a relief! Finishing it actually became a challenge fo...more

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Nov 20, 2011

Robi rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, mystery

This is a very good book. Even if the second part is not as good as the first.

Galip is a lawer whose wife disappear at the same moment of her half-brother Calal.
The narration of Galip's quest is interwoven with articles written by Calal for a newspaper. Both the search and the articles do not really help finding the disappeared characters but are means to discover the city of Istanbul and its most characteristic citizens.

In the first part of the book this ploy work perfe...more

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Aug 31, 2010

Oon rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: nobel-laureates

WOW
WUAOW
WUOAOW

Sbenarnya buku ini tergolong buku yang susah dihabisi (dibaca sampai habis). Kalimat dalam buku ini panjang-panjang, penuh dengan koma dan klausa-klausa pendukung menyebabkan membaca buku ini lebih dari 2 jam dijamin akan membuat mata berair. Entah karena pedih ataupun karena menguap.

Tapi buku ini benar-benar sangat kaya. Penuh dengan pemikiran-pemikiran dan pertanyaan-pertanyaan terkait dengan pergulatan hidup hampir semua orang di dunia: masal...moreWOW
WUAOW
WUOAOW

Sbenarnya buku ini tergolong buku yang susah dihabisi (dibaca sampai habis). Kalimat dalam buku ini panjang-panjang, penuh dengan koma dan klausa-klausa pendukung menyebabkan membaca buku ini lebih dari 2 jam dijamin akan membuat mata berair. Entah karena pedih ataupun karena menguap.

Tapi buku ini benar-benar sangat kaya. Penuh dengan pemikiran-pemikiran dan pertanyaan-pertanyaan terkait dengan pergulatan hidup hampir semua orang di dunia: masalah identitas. Berlatarkan awal tahun 1980-an, Turki adalah sebuah negara di tengah dua identitas: Asia dan Eropa, puing kota tua Constantinople dan Istanbul modern, Kiri dan Kanan, Islam dan Sekular.

Di antara sekian juta penduduk kota Istanbul-Turki, Galip, sang tokoh utama, adalah salah satu orang yang mempertanyakan identitasnya, yang tidak puas dengan identitasnya sekarang, yang merindukan identitas baru yang lebih heroik, lebih spektakuler dari identitasnya sebagai seorang normal dengan penghidupan normal. Hal ini terutama dipicu oleh istrinya yang hilang, yang dia duga melarikan diri bersama seorang kolumnis terkenal yang masih famili: Celal.

Jika seorang detektif ingin mengungkap sebuah kejahatan, detektif tersebut harus berpikir seperti penjahat, membayangkan dirinya adalah penjahat, mengenakan identitas penjahat tersebut: sepatunya, bajunya, pikirannya. Demikianlah Galip mencoba menemukan istrinya dengan berusaha menjadi Celal, kolumnis favorit di salah satu surat kabar terbaik, Kompas-nya Turki, kolumnis yang begitu sering dikutip pembacanya. Menyusuri jejak Celal, Galip mengitari Istanbul, jalan-jalannya, tembok-tembok mesjidnya, gang-gang sempitnya, sejarahnya, penghuninya, ide-ide terlarangnya, komunitas-yang-terpinggirkan - nya dan kolom-kolom surat kabarnya.

Cerita ini terdiri atas bab-bab yang berselang-seling: cerita Galip dan kolom suratkabar Celal. Walau demikian, kontinuitas cerita ini tetap terjalin dengan kuat dengan gagasan sebagai penghubung antar-bab alih-alih kejadian naratif. Yang membuat buku ini sangat kaya adalah gagasan-gagasan dan perenungan (cenderung filosofis) terkait identitas dan makna dari "menjadi diri sendiri". Apa itu identitas? Apa itu menjadi diri sendiri? Hal-hal itulah yang dikupas dalam buku ini dengan cara yang khas, yang membuat tulisan ini menjadi suara yang benar-benar original, demikian dekat, seolah-olah suara tersebut berasal dari dalam diri kita sendiri.(less)

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Feb 05, 2012

Jenny rated it

Shelves: books-featuring-archives-and-rm

As was pointed out to me by A. who recommended that I read it, The Black Book is similar to Cortazar's Hopscotch, which he also recommended without reservation. I am ambivalent about both novels, but, ultimately cannot detract from their ratings for being "difficult."

Like Cortazar's narrator, who becomes increasingly unhinged over the course of the plot, Galip seems like a trustworthy, stolid protagonist when the reader first encounters him. Following the disappearance of ...more

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Oct 27, 2011

Maksut rated it

Shelves: fiction

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. This might contain some spoilers!

Now I'm left with mixed feelings about the book. Maybe it's because Orhan Pamuk intentionally left some of its pages 'dark' for readers' imagination. Or it's simply because my attention span is not enough to follow intellectual details or philosophical riddles.

To note, as a native speaker, I've read Turkish original version and this is the first novel of Pamuk that I've read. I'd like to think of myself at least familiar with some of the famou...more

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Aug 13, 2011

Kevin Tole rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: contemporary-novels

This was like driving a car that's misfiring. When it did start to run true I found myself driving down country lanes in a foreign country in the fog with lots of unmarked crossroads.
However I struggled on to the end. There is some really interesting exposition on the nature of identity written in a dense style. Some artful descriptions and the over-riding sense of decay.
A Turkish lawyer searches for his wife who's upped and left him (which isn't surprising) and his uncle, the newspaper columnis...more

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May 21, 2009

Deborah Palmer rated it

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Finally finished the book last week. As you can see from my initial reading of the book until completion the novel alternately drove me crazy and appealed to me at the same time. I believe overall Galip our subject/hero finds that writing and telling stories helps you to transcend yourself but in the end you are still you. As the expression goes, wherever you go there you are. There is always a story within the story, however Mr. Pamuk could have left out the comparisons/analysis to/of Rumi. No ...moreFinally finished the book last week. As you can see from my initial reading of the book until completion the novel alternately drove me crazy and appealed to me at the same time. I believe overall Galip our subject/hero finds that writing and telling stories helps you to transcend yourself but in the end you are still you. As the expression goes, wherever you go there you are. There is always a story within the story, however Mr. Pamuk could have left out the comparisons/analysis to/of Rumi. No matter what Pamuk writes he will never be as deep yet simple as the poet Rumi.

This story like the novel Snow is not your traditional mystery. It weaves together several levels and it is really a psychological drama. My impressions thus far:

Switched Lives
One with the Beloved (Rumi)
If I don't measure up then I will become you.
Swallowed up -- me as an individual ceases to exist.

Each of the chapters are vignettes, slices of melancholia, a theme that repeats itself in all of Pamuk's books. Another subject is that of assimilation whether cultural or as an individual. No more originality. Pamuk is one of those authors who creates his own worlds in his books based on his own life and upbring in Istanbul, Turkey. Actually except for maybe for his book, My Name is Red, Pamuk tends to repeat the same themes, subjects and topics over and over ad naseum! Nothing new under the sun?!

This novel leaves something to be desired. However you may like the book if you enjoy nontraditional mysteries/dramas. Cavet; Pamuk tends to repeat the same overiding themes throughout all his books. Actually his best book was the non-Fiction, Istanbul, the autobiography of his life, which really made me want to visit his country. The slices of life in Instanbul were at least enjoyable. I think all non-Western or non-European cultures have since the 18th century experienced the East vs. West and/or Christianity vs Indigenous Religions debates/controvesies. The fact that Pamuk rehases this concept in each of his books does not give the reader anything different to look forward to. In fact the dialogue can try the reader's patience with all theses "hidden" meanings and sublevels. Only the names/locations of the characters change. I honestly believe that Mr. Pamuk is trying to be too "deep"!! Remember Alice in Wonderland? Well this book is turning more and more into Adult Jackerwocky. Mr. Pamuk could have left out the constant analysis and as Malcolm X said, "Make it Plain!!"(less)

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Apr 13, 2009

Christopher rated it

While reading Orhan Pamuk's breakthrough novel, it is easy to feel as lost as the central character, a lawyer who discovers that the central mystery is not the whereabouts in enigmatic Istanbul of his missing wife, but rather that of identity itself. His identity, that of a newspaper columnist given to revolutionary tales and historical asides, that of a mysterious caller, and in fact, of Istanbul itself and its relation to the culture and identity of the West are all called into question.
...more

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Jan 25, 2012

Anthony rated it

"it will remind me of another story in which the hero discovers that he can only become himself by first becoming someone else or by losing himself in someone else's stories"

This quote from the last paragraph sums up the beautiful melancholic theme of this story of a man, who, while searching for his missing wife and uncle rediscovers himself. The pace may be a bit slow for many, but the depth hidden within the language yields treasures and the interchanging narrative voices...more

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Jul 22, 2011

Barry rated it

I thought this book began well, dragged through the middle, and almost died at the end; however, the final chapter was really good. I wish the translator's note was at the beginning, and I wish it wasn't so redundant. I know content matches form here, but at some point it gets tiresome. I also feel like something is lost (as always) in translation, that there are tropes, allusions, and other devices that I miss because the book is mainly Turkish. That being said, I loved the setting within a cul...more

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Sep 10, 2009

Nick rated it

This book should have been better. It had a very good beginning but then really fell off.

The fault is most likely both Pamuk’s and Freely’s (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 Pamuk’s prose is. That beauty does not come...moreThis book should have been better. It had a very good beginning but then really fell off.

The fault is most likely both Pamuk’s and Freely’s (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 Pamuk’s prose is. That beauty does not come through. Instead, his writing seems overly verbose and his ideas, pseudo-significant. I wonder how much I would have enjoyed the novel if the translation were better (unfortunately, this is apparently a new translation, “improving” on a translation from the 90’s!)

You get the feeling that Pamuk is a graphomaniac—he seems much more interested in writing itself than in writing about anything. This is a common disease amongst contemporary writers—all smart, no heart. It doesn’t help that the genre is “deconstructionist detective fiction” from the 1980’s. It’s not as bad as “City of Ass” by Mr. I’m P. Auster, but the ending is almost as unsatisfying. It’s also completely ironic that a novel about the life-affirming nature of story-telling can lack all of those pieces that make a story worth reading. For instance, I never cared about any of the characters. They never seemed to act like human beings; their motivations and reactions just seemed false, the product of a writer who writes characters just so they can talk about writing and the theme of “identity.” It’s almost doubly offensive because Pamuk puts the characters in situations which are highly emotional—in other words, he’s letting the situations alone force you, unnaturally, to feel things, rather than allowing characters that we care about to go through these dramatic situations and organically create emotions within the reader.

I think I would have been more forgiving of the book if it hadn’t been so long. The middle is so boring and repetitive that I most likely would not have finished the novel if I hadn’t been stuck in a room with nothing to do except read the one book I had brought with me. I literally believe you could skip the first 3/4 of part two and actually lose nothing (well, the chapter entitled “The Executioner and the Weeping Face” is worth reading). I also think that Maureen Freely could have cut every one of Pamuk’s sentences in half. The sentences just start avalanching you with useless detail. I don’t think I’ve ever read so much useless detail. Pynchon, for example, might throw a lot of strange details at you, but they’re not useless—they’re funny. Pamuk, or at least Pamuk in English, has no sense of humor whatsoever.

However, it’s not as if the book is totally without merit. Again, I liked the beginning of the book a lot! It had a great set up and you really thought he was going to take you somewhere special (the car ran out of gas). The conceit of chapters that alternated between the plot that the characters are living and the columns that the characters within the plot are reading was novel and refreshing; the stories within these columns were some of the best parts of the book. And if you’ve been to Istanbul, it’s fun to see all the different parts of the city pop up in various places. Yet this wasn't enough.

To sum up: this book is not the reason he won the Nobel Prize. Or at least, I hope not!(less)

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Apr 08, 2011

Sara Cat rated it

I loved this one. To be fair, Istanbul is one of my favorite cities in the world, and this subterranean, hallucinogenic historical version of it - well, it's just awesome. Love the vision - all the sunken wrecks of the Bosphorus (and the history of the area) exposed, the wax figurines of Turkish history living underground, the semi-unreliable narrator (always one of my favorite techniques). This book might be too obscure for readers unfamiliar with the area (though I loved Satanic Verses and kno...more

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Aug 22, 2011

Joseph Elliott rated it

At times dense and difficult to read, but at other times a captivating liguistical masterpiece. The translation is excellent, I can feel the "Turkishness" of the prose coming through in this book. While the plot is very slow moving (I'm a guy who really likes a convoluted plot), this book's style of interspersing newspaper columns and parables with the action makes for an interesting read. Definitely not your typical mystery novel, not an easy beach read, this book has depth and prof...more

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Feb 07, 2009

Aaron rated it

Like a confused "Name of the Rose," but with an ungodly proliferation of Arabian-Nights style interjected stories, occasionally interesting philosophical poetic musings. As with "Snow", the women are especially under-drawn, just pretty figures and faces who nominally mean a great deal to the men involved, but for no particular reason that we can understand. The main character, whose wife has run off, is a particularly strange type: not once does he really try to figure out ...more

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Jul 04, 2009

David rated it

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 id...more

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About Orhan Pamuk

Ferit Orhan Pamuk is a Nobel Prize-winning Turkish novelist. Pamuk is often regarded as a post-modern writer. As one of Turkey's most prominent novelists, his work has been translated into more than forty languages. He is the recipient of numerous national and international literary awards. He was the first Turkish person awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature on October 12, 2006, commended for be...more

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Quotes from The Black Book

“[N]othing is as surprising as life. Except for writing. Except for writing. Yes, of course, except for writing, the only consolation.” — 24 people liked it

“When you look into the faces of these quiet creatures who don't know how to tell stories--who are mute, who can't make themselves heard, who fade into the woodwork, who only think of the perfect answer after the fact, after they're back at home, who can never think of a story that anyone else will find interesting--is there not more depth and more meaning in them? You can see every letter of every untold story swimming on their faces, and all the signs of silence, dejection, and even defeat. You can even imagine your own face in those faces, can't you?” — 4 people liked it

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