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Dec 29, 2008

Kelly rated it:

It is just lucky that I happened to read Menocal's Ornament of the World just before this, as it perfectly prepared me for the psychological labyrinth that is this book. It introduced me to a beautiful, helpful image for Pamuk's creation- the "memory palaces" and "memory gardens". This is not an introduction to Istanbul, it is a memory palace worthy of the wildest child's fantasies that haunt this tapestry. Perhaps John Adams, the minimalist composer, put it best when discuss More...

22 comments like (18 people liked it)

Jan 10, 2011

Chris rated it:

This is the second book by Pamuk that I have read. I would like to point out that it seems that this book should be read either before or after The Museum of Innocence because I found myself making it notes of where the novel and this memoir collide.

I've never been to Istanbul, but now I want to go. What Pamuk does is not only describe his family but a city as a conflict between East and West. While it is not something that my own western city feels, it is somewhat akin to the fee More...

9 comments like (5 people liked it)

Nov 24, 2011

Arakah Mushaweh rated it:

من بين خمسين كتاباً يصطفون في قائمة الكتب في الكيندل .. وقع اختياري على أورهان ، قرأت هذا الكتاب لأنه أورهان المبدع كما قرأت له في كتابه ألوان أخرى الذي لم أكمله بعد .. ولأنها اسطنبول التي أعشق .. هذا الكتاب الذي ما إن تبدأ بقراءة أول صفحة حتى تفوح لك ذاكرة الأمكنة .. هذا الكتاب المتعمق في ذاكرة اسطنبول .. حزن اسطنبول ، بيت العائلة المتمركز في اسطنبول ، الأبيض والأسود في اسطنبول .. حزن البسفور والياليات التي لم تعد موجودة بعد انهيار الخلافة .. كل هذه التفاصيل التي تشوبها رائحة الماضي بل هي من ال More...

0 comments like (6 people liked it)

Oct 17, 2009

Irwan rated it:

The most enchanting thing about this book is its symmetry. He opens with a statement that from a very young age he suspected that somewhere in the streets of Istanbul, there lived another Orhan so much like him that he could pass for his twin, even his double. In the last chapter, his father apparently led a double life just like in his imagination.

Pamuk manages to intermingle the story about Istanbul and himself - reflecting each other along the way. The writing style is mostly vis More...

6 comments like (5 people liked it)

Feb 01, 2008

Cortney rated it:

This was not, first of all, the book I espected it to be. It was not truly an autobiography of the author, who gave nothing at all away, at least in the context of the west (perhaps it would shock conservative Turks that he apparently had a sexual relationship with a girl as a young man, but I don't know what Turkish mores are, so I shouldn't judge) and gave away little in terms of the city that he was supposedly also biographying. It gave tantalising hints of things, and there were potential More...

1 comment like (4 people liked it)

Oct 09, 2011

Shady rated it:

الكتاب 450 ورقة خلص في 24 ساعة .. ممتع ومسلي،وأنا بطبعي بفضل كتب السيرة الذاتية على أي كتب تانية، وبالتالي كان اختيار موفق ..

الكتاب طبعة سلسلة الجوائز ودا أفضل من طبعة تانية شفتها من غير كل الصور الجميلة اللي جوا الكتاب، لدرجة ان الصور هي جزء لا يتجزأ من كتاب زي دا، وأي طبعة تانية من غير الصور مش هتوصل الإحساس بنفس القوة.

اسطنبول .. الذكريات والمدينة..

لا يصبح المشهد _أي مشهد_ رائعا إلا بعد أن يضفي عليه التاريخ جمالا عرضيا ويمنحنا منظورا عرضيا جديدا

ج More...

7 comments like (3 people liked it)

Mar 20, 2009

htanzil rated it:

Istanbul adalah memoar dari peraih nobel sastra 2006 asal Turki, Orhan Pamuk. Namun berbeda dengan memoar-memoar lainnya yang biasanya lebih mengutamakan kisah hidup si penulisnya, dalam memoarnya ini Pamuk tak hanya berkisah mengenai sejarah hidupnya. Dengan cara betutur seperti dalam novel-novelnya , Pamuk mencatat penggalan memori kehidupan masa lalunya yang dikaitkan dengan memori kolektif Istanbul, kota kelahirannya yang begitu ia cintai. Jadi bisa disimpulkan bahwa buku ini merupakan s More...

3 comments like (5 people liked it)

Mar 23, 2011

Arsene rated it:

Can't believe I've finished the book. After reading the first half, I thought it very evocative and compelling. I was deeply touched by the melancholy atmosphere, or rather, that Hüzün spirit mentioned in the book. So did I enjoy thoroughly those moments of satire and contemplation through layer upon layer of which the author constructed his train of thought. However, its repetitiveness grew a bit tedious later. As a matter of fact, the poor Istanbul does have some characters in common with my d More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Feb 22, 2011

Abdelhamid rated it:

أورهان باموق طفلا و شابا،اسطنبول في زمان اندثر،السوداوية كسمة للمدينة و سكانها ،و مواضيع أخرى تؤطر هذا الثالوث الذي يشكل العمود الفقري للنص
تنساب الكلمات و الجمل بشكل أبعدني عن سأمي خلال تصفحي السابق لروايتي باموق "إسمي أحمر" و "ثلج" (أتمنى أن يكون مزاجي حينها هو السبب).هنا استمتعت بالذكريات
هنا وجدت نفسي في مدينة عظيمة(وجها لوجه مع الصور المرفقة التي تمثلها) بدات تفقد ألقها بعد انهيار العثمانيين.مدينة تتجه عل متن مركبة فضائية نحو التغريب ،لتترك عمارتها لجمال الخرائ More...

10 comments like (3 people liked it)

Nov 18, 2011

أميــــرة rated it:

ليس كتابًا هو بل موسوعة أهداها كاتب مرموق لمعشوقته "اسطنبول" فخرجت مليئة بالتفاصيل التي تدهشنا من فرط بساطتها وصدقها وألفتها ...
ومما زاد من غنى الكتاب الصور الفوتوغرافية واللوحات التي انتشرت بين صفحاته ، فكان كل مشهد يصفه الكاتب تجد بجانبه الصورة المعبرة عنه ، فشعرت معه أنني قطعت تذكرة سفر لاسطنبول وأنا جالسة بمكاني..
أدهشني كم التشابه بين مصر وتركيا ، وبين اللغتين العربية والتركية ، وجعلني هذا الكتاب حقا في توق لزيارة تلك المدينة..

الترجمة بديعة ولكن عابها شئ واحد وه More...

5 comments like (3 people liked it)

Oct 03, 2011

Margot rated it:

Il me semble certain que Orhan Pamuk a choisi de placer son livre sous l'égide de la tristesse ("hüzün") et on sent bien de quelle manière celle-ci est présente durant tout le récit, à la fois dans les souvenirs de l'auteur et dans le portrait que ce dernier dresse d'Istanbul, et je crois qu'irrémédiablement, cette tristesse, cette mélancolie qu'il décrit comme inhérente à Istanbul (et aux Stambouliotes en général) finit par nous gagner au fur et à mesure que l'on avance dans notre lec More...

5 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 09, 2011

Ratih rated it:

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4 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 20, 2010

Harun Harahap rated it:

Buku ini karena merupakan sebuah memoir, jadi tidak perlu mengerutkan dahi dan berpikir keras untuk memahami tulisan beliau. Saya sangat suka kalimat akhir di bagian pertama. " Jadi, perhatikan baik-baik, pembaca yang terhormat. Izinkan saya berterus terang kepada Anda dan sebagai balasannya izinkan saya memohon simpati Anda." Seorang Penulis besar peraih Nobel memohon kepada pembacanya, aneh sekali, tapi jauh lebih baik dari penulis baru yang menghujat pembacanya.

Memoir k More...

14 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 22, 2008

Anthony rated it:

I am shortly going to Istanbul for the first time and, rather than a Rough Guide or Lonely Planet it seemed that this Nobel Prize winning author might be a rather better guide. It is largely autobiographical and recounts his growing up in this great City. He is at his best for me when it becomes a memoir of his early life - a portrait of the artist as a young man. It is not quite so good when talking of other Istanbul authors of the 19th & 20th century. The chapter on his 'first love' is moving More...

4 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 12, 2008

Nika rated it:

It wasn't really what I expected, though I'm not sure what I expected. It says a lot about people who described Istanbul at some point in the history. Poets, writes, historians, journalists, painters, etc. Lots of them are foreign, but there are some Turkish ones as well. The author talks a lot about melancholy of the inhabitants of Istanbul and the city itself. I can't say I felt it when I was there, but one can notice that the nation is still searching for themselves. I enjoy the descriptions More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Apr 01, 2009

Robertisenberg rated it:

In preparation for my May journey to the Balkans, I found my first excuse to read Pamuk. Everybody brags about his novels, but this nonfiction biography -- of himself and his lifelong home -- also won some acclaim. And it's no wonder: The book blends personal reflection, in roughly chronological order, with a survey of the city and its peculiar character.

In short, Pamuk diagnoses Istanbul with chronic depression, but it's not all bad. The term he uses is "huzun", which roug More...

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Dec 09, 2008

Mukikamu rated it:

Orhan Pamuk’s book about Istanbul is an odd book on this blog, for it is not about a travel experience, but about a personal journey and the spirit of the city where Pamuk lived all his life. I must admit, I lived in Turkey for three years when I was a child, so the book brought back familiar sceneries and was thought-provoking in a peculiar way. This personal attachment made it impossible to read as a curious traveler and I clinged to those details of everyday life that brought back my own memo More...

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Feb 01, 2012

Stephen rated it:

While other writers travel for inspiration, the Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk says that he prefers to remain home and in front of a window that looks out on his "melancholy" Istanbul. His self-image is so interwoven with his vision of Istanbul that when Pamuk speaks of his city, he is speaking of himself; and when he speaks of himself, he is speaking of his city. So what we have in this wonderful book is an autobiography, concerning only Pamuk's first eighteen or so years, that is entit More...

1 comment like

Dec 06, 2011

Gordon rated it:

The author of this book is Turkey's one and only winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, received in 2006. It's not by any means the book he is most famous for -- that honor would go to My Name is Red or to Snow. I tried reading the latter but gave it up as too depressing. Istanbul, unlike his other works, is not a novel. It's a sort of quirky autobiography of his childhood and youth, up until the age of 20 or so, when he was an unhappy university student in architecture.

More tha More...

0 comments like

Nov 27, 2011

Ajk rated it:

I started reading this book way back in Spring 2007. I was in the airport between flights (I want to say on my way back to school from Albuquerque). I just started taking Turkish and I was making plans to study in Istanbul that fall. So when I saw Pamuk's book in the "Travel" section of the Hudson News, I figured it was worth a snag, right?

Wrong. Pamuk's style (lots of longing, lots of sighing, very little description of what things look like) isn't really conducive to travel More...

0 comments like

Sep 18, 2011

Jan rated it:

This is primarily a book about Orhan Pamuk and how he grew up and only secondly a book about Istanbul. To the extent this is a book about Istanbul, Orhan Pamuk's approach is anechdotical rather than a systematical presentation of his home-town. Some of the sides of Istanbul he presents us for - like Hüzün, the history of the people and houses living along the Bosphoros straight, the minorities and the neighbourhoods where they used to live, the life of the rich of Istanbul etc - is obviously imp More...

0 comments like

Aug 16, 2011

Travka rated it:

"Стамбул" - книга не о Городе, а о тоске и ностальгии по нему. Вас не встретит на пороге радушный гид с предложением "посмотрите налево, посмотрите направо". Вас проведут по улицам, которых нет и расскажут истории о тех, кого вы уже здесь никогда не встретите. И неспроста самая сильная глава "Стамбула" посвящена не самому Городу, а особенному чувству - huzn оно называется в Коране. Это боль, вызванная тяжелой утратой. Не печаль, не ностальгия, не тоска, а вот, huzn More...

0 comments like

Aug 16, 2011

Chin Hwa rated it:

I haven't read too many books by 'city flaneurs' but they seem to share one quality: ultra-introspection. Like the narrator in _Open City_, _Istanbul's_ narrator (who, in this case, is the writer) is a restless wanderer who seems to take more pleasure in imagining associations and possibilities of places and objects rather than interacting with reality. New York or Istanbul becomes a construct of the narrator's imagination and thus a poor neighbourhood can become wonderfully romantic and its s More...

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Aug 12, 2011

Jimena rated it:

un mundo de sensaciones, una descripción subjetiva a la par que adorable, vulnerable, real, de una ciudad que marcó la forma de ser de un personaje. Pamuk se trata a si mismo como personaje relacionado con un escenario del que no puede desligarse. Así como la huella de toda la cultura que le antecede es parte de él y de su noltalgia, que piensa es un rasgo de todo estambulí. Nos susurra en blanco y negro la fuerza del Bósforo sobre sus habitantes. Más que una autobiografia lo veo como un gran tr More...

0 comments like

Jun 04, 2011

Mary rated it:

Nobel Prize-winning Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk has written a lovely and painful memoir of growing up in Istanbul during the 1950s and 1960s. Already devoid of much of its Ottoman glamor, Istanbul in the mid-20th century had turned into a city full of faded wonders and marked by huzun, the near-palpable melancholy that has gripped the city like a vise for about a century. Pamuk finds huzun in the burned mansions along the Bosphorus, in ugly modernist architecture, in the fatalistic attitude of More...

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Oct 20, 2010

Irwin rated it:

I decided to read this book in anticipation of a trip to Istanbul. I have to say I was disapppointed. I don't love Mr. Pamuk's writing, and the content of this book is kind of a grab bag of odd details about himself and his city. Bottom line: There is rather too much about him, and too little about the city. He has told us way too much about his family, far more than I want to know about his sex life, and too little about Istanbul itself. Many of his accounts of his wanderings through his belove More...

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Sep 30, 2010

Shauna rated it:

This memoir is a fascinating account of one man's experiences growing up as a member of the upper class in Istanbul.

Pamuk feels keenly the divide and tension between rich and poor, past and present, East and West, in Istanbul, and he mourns the past glories of Istanbul when it was the capital of a long-lived empire. I particularly enjoyed his recounting of the sad increasing Westernization of Istanbul and wish I could have visited Istanbul in the full of its beauty, before all the sk More...

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Mar 08, 2010

Peg rated it:

Istanbul - Memories and the City is an autobiographical account of novelist Orhan Pamuk's life in the city where he has lived all of his life. The theme of melancholy ties the author's life to the city he loves. Pamuk describes Istanbul, situated on the Bosphorus, as the heart of a geopolitical world and yet a ruin which survives a glorious past when it was the heart of the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires.

In addition to the text, Pamuk includes numerous pictures, carefully selected More...

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Dec 19, 2009

Albert rated it:

A quick read, easily digestible in one or two sittings; the chapters are short and fly by. The quality of the chapters are uneven -- Pamuk's analysis of literary and visual works are consistently fascinating (including a hilarious chapter on Flaubert's penis), but his personal memoirs of his fights with his brother and mother weren't as compelling. The theme that ties all of the chapters together is the sense of melancholy (hüzün) that comes from both the decline of the Ottoman Empire, the decay More...

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Nov 30, 2009

Christy rated it:

Turkey's foremost novelist unlocks the door to his past in this carefully structured and thoughtful exploration of the city that has both sheltered and inspired him. Pamuk is a translator; like many Istanbullus, he cannot help but look to the West, but he will always return to the East, to Istanbul. This duality, the tension between East and West, runs through the book.

It is precisely Istanbul's half-hearted attempt at Westernization and modernization which has eroded and impoverish More...

2 comments like

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