Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read.

Start by marking “The Black Book” as Want to Read:

Other editions

Enlarge cover

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Open Preview

The Black Book

Orhan Pamuk,

Maureen Freely (Translator)

3.92 · Rating details · 10,158 ratings · 818 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

Get A Copy

Paperback, 466 pages

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

More Details... Edit Details

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Reader Q&A

To ask other readers questions about The Black Book, please sign up.

Lists with This Book

Puslu Kıtalar Atlası by İhsan Oktay Anar

Saatleri Ayarlama Enstitüsü by Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar

Best of Turkish Literature

544 books — 807 voters

Birds Without Wings by Louis de Bernières

Mediterranean Melting Pot (III): Byzantium and Turkey

159 books — 207 voters

More lists with this book...

Community Reviews

Showing 1-30

Average rating 3.92 ·

Rating details

· 10,158 ratings · 818 reviews

More filters

Sort order

Start your review of The Black Book

Dec 20, 2019 Jim Fonseca rated it it was amazing

Shelves: nobel-prize, turkish-authors, istanbul, favorite-books

One of Pamuk’s first novels. First a sample of some of the wonderful writing from the very first page:

“Ruya was lying facedown on the bed, lost to the sweet warm darkness beneath the billowing folds of the blue-checked quilt. The first sounds of a winter morning seeped in from outside: the rumble of a passing car, the clatter of an old bus, the rattle of copper kettles that the salep maker shared with the pastry cook, the whistle of the parking attendant at the dolmus stop. A cold leaden light f ...more

flag 180 likes · Like · see review

Aug 07, 2017 Henry Avila rated it liked it

The big issue from Orhan Pamuk 's , a Nobel Prize winning writer, novel is identity...who are we ? The setting Istanbul, Turkey, the largest city in the nation, straddling the bright blue waters of the narrow , and rather shallow , but still even today quite ...
crucial Bosphorus Strait, on both the continents of
Asia and Europe . This is the ultimate problem for its divided people, do we become westernized or remain with traditional, old customs ... They go see ancient Hollywood films, some 20 ye The big issue from Orhan Pamuk 's , a Nobel Prize winning writer, novel is identity...who are we ? The setting Istanbul, Turkey, the largest city in the nation, straddling the bright blue waters of the narrow , and rather shallow , but still even today quite ...
crucial Bosphorus Strait, on both the continents of
Asia and Europe . This is the ultimate problem for its divided people, do we become westernized or remain with traditional, old customs ... They go see ancient Hollywood films, some 20 years old, at the movie theaters, ( no television then ) enamored by the stars, copy what is shown, clothes, manners, language, everything, the values from the past are no more . Galip Bey, mid -thirty, is an uninspired lawyer (not happy in the occupation), in his native, fast growing town, married to the beauty Ruya, a woman of the same age, he has known since childhood. Intelligent with a propensity for reading detective books, one after another, not interested in work, lately him too. His famous older cousin by more than twenty years Celal Bey, a newspaper writer with a column that all the city reads, in fact the whole nation and beyond the borders, he is the most read in the Middle East..No surprise that Galip is a big admirer of his relative's sophisticated writing, has many enemies, though, dabbles in dangerous politics , he is also Ruya's half-brother. Turmoil consumes the people's daily lives there, political violence and killings in the streets, many urge a military coup to cleanse the atmosphere, bring unity and calm back ... circa 1960. Mysteriously Ruya leaves him, later Celal cannot be found either, have they run off together? Then begins the long search by the husband to discover where they are hiding. A "Heart of Darkness" voyage on land , as he walks through ominously deserted streets , lights fade in sunless places, shadows fall on filthy , evil smelling slums... observing apartments that are ready to collapse, citizens struggling to survive the ever expanding, choatic megalopolis , its rapidly changing environment, the poor begging and stealing, death lurks by, but nobody cares . Galip has a feeling, a strange disturbing belief... he is not alone , someone is following, an evil eye, yet the threat is dismissed ... must go on, what occurs good or bad will happen , the dispirited man has to know the truth. He continues the seemingly fruitless odyssey..A strange trip into Turkish history and the crisis in that magnificent country, what is its destiny? A book that both entertains and causes boredom to the reader, if a person wants to find the real Turkey, this is the book, but be patient, the story will delight and frustrate, the plot is not really important... the philosophy is. The author's love hate relationship with a city he was born in, is apparent. ...more

flag 119 likes · Like · see review

Feb 21, 2008 Matt rated it really liked 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 skimming either. It's not b ...more

flag 56 likes · Like · see review

Sep 20, 2020 Jibran rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: turkish, fiction, nobel

Read many years ago, this is one of the top three books by Pamuk which I love the most. The other two being My Name Is Red and Snow - obvious choices.

No one makes old and modern Turkey come alive on page like Pamuk.

A re-read is on the horizon. ...more

flag 47 likes · Like · see review

Dec 03, 2017 Inderjit Sanghera rated it it was amazing

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 Pamuk’s novels; identity, Westernisation and Istanbul, combined with a sense of playfulness and erudition. Let’s s 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 Pamuk’s novels; identity, Westernisation and Istanbul, combined with a sense of playfulness and erudition. Let’s start with Istanbul. Few other novelists have imbued the cities in which the stories are set with such importance; in ‘The Black Book’, Pamuk paints Istanbul is a dull, dolorous monochrome, a city of constant snowfalls, of darkness and deceit, a city in which a web of conspiracies and conflagrations. This stands in stark contrast to the bright incandescence with which Istanbul is normally depicted, but is important it establishing the mental state of the narrator, Galip. Galip labours through a series of identity crises throughout the novel; he spends most his time searching for his cousin, the newspaper journalist Celal, who feels may (or may not have) run away with his wife, Rüya. Pamuk references Proust-specifically Marcel’s obsession with Albertine-on several occasions throughout the novel and Galip’s search for Rüya, his fixation with her perceived unfaithfulness and the unreliable depiction of her character all parody Marcel’s search for Albertine following her death. Another source of parody for Pamuk is the genre of detective fiction-as the narrator states

“Galip had once told Rüya that the only detective book he’d ever want to read would be the one in which not even the author knew the murderer’s identity. Instead of decorating the story with clues and red herrings, the author would be forced to come to grips with his characters and his subject, and his characters would have a chance to become people in a book instead of just figments of their author’s imagination.”

Clues constantly serve as red herrings and inconsequential events or people suddenly become vitally important-or not important at all-instead the conventions of detective fiction; the femme fatale and the cuckolded husband are turned on their heads-the reader is unsure as to whether it is Galip searching for Celal or Celal searching for Galip, or how much of the novel is a figment of Galip’s imagination or, more to the point, how aware Galip is that he is just a figment of another’s imagination, the author, who makes a late appearance (or does he?) in the novel. Is it the realisation of this which is at the core of Galip’s struggle with his identity, or is it the gradual coalescene of Galip with Celal, until Galip begins writing Celal’s stories and have conversations with malevolent mad-men as Celal? This uncertainty creates a sense of unreliability throughout the narration, as reality and fantasy merge to become virtually indistinguishable, in fact, given that the whole thing is a work of fiction, is what is real even relevant?

Pamuk further explores post-modern concepts and techniques via Celal’s newspaper articles which are interspersed throughout the novel. At times it feels like the articles are long drawn at clues which will allow Galip to find Celal, however this may be more a product of Galip’s warped mindset and self-obsession-the articles themselves are the high-points of the novel. Celal rails against plagiarism, yet many of his articles are plagiarised from other novels-for example, the pastiche of the ‘Grand Inquisitor’ chapter from ‘The Brothers Karamazov’. He is critical of imperialism, yet his articles perpetuate negative Western attitudes to the orient-like the narrator Galip, Celal’s articles are unreliable and duplicitous , yet are off-set with a lyrical verve which draws the reader in, as they are gradually ensconced within the wonderful web of deceit and uncertainty which Pamuk weaves across the novel. ...more

flag 40 likes · Like · see review

Nov 06, 2007 John rated it it was ok

Shelves: nobel-laureates, turkey

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.

Whatever the story i 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.

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. ...more

flag 31 likes · Like · see review

Mar 06, 2008 Adam rated it really liked it

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

flag 25 likes · Like · see review

Mar 11, 2014 Whitaker rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction-1950-and-after, turkey, z_2014-read

*Available from KOBOBOOKS

The book, in a nutshell, traces the protagonist’s search for his wife and, subsequently, also his cousin. There is indeed a vague plot resembling a detective novel here, but that is hardly the point of the novel. The real point of the novel is Turkey, as Galip’s search for Ruya takes him around Istanbul meeting various people who he thinks might help him find her, and via this process the novel morphs into an examination of identity, both individual and national.

On one *Available from KOBOBOOKS

The book, in a nutshell, traces the protagonist’s search for his wife and, subsequently, also his cousin. There is indeed a vague plot resembling a detective novel here, but that is hardly the point of the novel. The real point of the novel is Turkey, as Galip’s search for Ruya takes him around Istanbul meeting various people who he thinks might help him find her, and via this process the novel morphs into an examination of identity, both individual and national.

On one level, Pamuk reflects on the Turkish dilemma of being caught between Asia and Europe, of how to be both modern/secular without becoming purely a poor copy of the West. On another level, Pamuk reflects on what it means to be oneself, delving into Ottoman culture and sufi beliefs to mull on this question.

You will note that I have avoided stating that Pamuk answers these questions or proffers any solutions to them. The novel often appears to approach an answer only for readers to find that answer taken away from them. In her Afterword to this edition of the novel, its translator, Maureen Freely, states, “The poet Murat Nemet-Nejat has described Turkish as a language that can evoke a thought unfolding.” This seems to describe Pamuk’s approach here as well: the novel is, or becomes, an exploration of Galip’s (and Pamuk’s) evolution of thought towards an ever receding conclusion, brought only to an artificial end by the end of the book.

The other aspect of the novel that so enchanted and struck me was its references to Turkish history and literature. Pamuk discusses this in an interview with the Paris Review:

“I went with my wife to the United States in 1985, and there I first encountered the prominence and the immense richness of American culture. As a Turk coming from the Middle East, trying to establish himself as an author, I felt intimidated. So I regressed, went back to my ‘roots’. I realized that my generation had to invent a modern national literature… I had to begin by making a strong distinction between the religious and literary connotations of Islamic literature, so that I could easily appropriate its wealth of games, gimmicks, and parables. Turkey had a sophisticated tradition of highly refined ornamental literature… There are lots of allegories that repeat themselves in the various oral storytelling traditions—of China, India, Persia. I decided to use them and set them in contemporary Istanbul… So I set all these rewritten stories in Istanbul, added a detective plot, and out came The Black Book. But at its source was the full strength of American culture…”

It is this state of interstitiality, of in-betweeness that I find most compelling and interesting about this work: the drawing from the richness of the well of Turkish culture without being slavish to tradition nor betraying it all the while trying to interpret it in a way that speaks authentically to the contemporary state so embedded in a culture/technology that is inherently Anglo-Saxon/American.
...more

flag 22 likes · Like · see review

Jan 22, 2015 Deea rated it really liked it

Recommended to Deea by: Karl-O

Shelves: nobel, best-2015, favourites

To what degree can we be ourselves? “To be or not to be oneself” , considers Pamuk, is life’s ultimate question. A roller-coaster which is alike in many aspects with a detective novel, this story is suffused with possible answers to the question above and explorations of how, only by telling stories, a man can really be himself. Through hypotheses developed in stories with a prince embarking on quests of finding his real self in order to be able to guide his people if he would come next in li To what degree can we be ourselves? “To be or not to be oneself” , considers Pamuk, is life’s ultimate question. A roller-coaster which is alike in many aspects with a detective novel, this story is suffused with possible answers to the question above and explorations of how, only by telling stories, a man can really be himself. Through hypotheses developed in stories with a prince embarking on quests of finding his real self in order to be able to guide his people if he would come next in line to the throne, with an executioner who feels remorse after beheading a certain individual who expresses regret for his life differently than others, with an eye which can follow you anywhere you go, with stories about Rumi and Shams of Tabriz and inherently about Sufis, with stories about people who can read letters on faces, Pamuk immerses the reader in a metaphysical ride, touching with great charm aspects like history, mysticism, differences between East and West, family relations and love.

Although I discovered touches of brilliancy in this book and ideas that kept me pondering, I constantly had the feeling that I was missing out on things, that some meanings were eluding me because of the translation or maybe because of the fact that I am not so familiar with Turkish culture. Some things didn’t add up, some loose ends kept me wondering if I should give this story 5 stars or 4 or 3. There were paragraphs which really resonated with me and I felt elated while reading them, paragraphs which made me think that I would definitely rate this book 5 stars and paragraphs which annoyed me because I could not see their sense. However, maybe this is Pamuk’s way of introducing his readers to a Turkish atmosphere throughout the book: a blend of historical and cultural influences, either different because of the spatial component (influences from Western cultures which people adopt from movies, Western writers, singers and tourists) or because of the temporal component (every aspect from Turkey’s history meant adopting a different influence, depending on the countries they conquered or they only came in contact with: Istanbul, for instance, is a blend of civilizations and its names over time can say many things about the idea I pointed above: Byzantium, Constantinople, Asitane (The Doorstep), New Rome, Stamboul etc. The fragment below is, in my opinion, expressing in a condensed and elegant fashion what I wanted to point above:

“When he stepped onto Ataturk Bridge, Galip had resolved to look only at faces. Watching each face brighten at his gaze, he could almost see question marks bubbling from their heads – the way they did in the Turkish versions of Spanish and Italian photo novels – but they vanished in the air without leaving a trace. Gazing across the bridge at the skyline, he thought he saw each and every one of their faces shimmering behind its dull gray veil, but this too was an illusion. It was perhaps possible to look into the faces of his fellow citizens and see in them the city’s long history – its misfortunes, its lost magnificence, its melancholy and pain – but these were not carefully arranged clues pointing to a secret world; they came from a shared defeat, a shared history, a shared shame. As they churned across the gray-blue waters of the Golden Horn, they left a trail of ugly brown bubbles in their wake.”

I loved the story about Alladdin and his shop and I loved the fragment about Galip’s love for Ruya (the two of them, although they were married, living together in the same outer reality, had minds and imaginations which inhabited different realms). I loved the ideas in this book, but didn’t quite like the story. I actually found it a bit absurd, although I am sure that the idea Pamuk wanted to express prevailed and the story was only used as a means of revealing what he wanted. I understood that Galip assumed Celal’s identity and that he embarked on a spiritual quest which helped him find himself rather than his missing wife or his uncle. The ending seemed however far-fetched and only able to dignify a soap-opera. Putting aside the spiritual journey, at a factual level the pursuit Galip embarks upon throughout the novel is destined to find Celal, rather than Ruya. The way she ends up being found and her supposed actions during her absence are rather secondary next to Celal’s, while Pamuk wants us to believe his hero is looking for her, rather than Celal. A flawed novel I would say, but an enticing one. Plus, I cannot help but wonder, weren’t these flaws there on purpose used by Pamuk for a certain effect? The fragment below would seem to say so.

“If every letter in every face had a hidden meaning and if each signified a concept, it followed that every word composed of those letters must also carry a second hidden meaning (…). The same could be said of sentences and paragraphs – in short all written text carried second, hidden meanings. But if one bore in mind that these meanings could be expressed in other sentences or other words…, one could, through interpretation, glean a third meaning from the second, and a fourth from the third, ad infinitum – so there were, in fact, an infinite numbers of possible interpretations to any given text. It was like an unending maze of city streets, with each street leading to another: maps resembling human faces. So a reader who set out to solve the mystery in his own way, following his own logic, was no different from a traveler who finds the mystery of a city slowly unfurling before him as he wanders through streets on that map: The more he discovers, the more the mystery spreads; the more the mystery spreads, the more is revealed and the more clearly he sees the mystery in the streets he himself has chosen, the roads he’s walked down and the alleys he’s walked up; for the mystery resides in his own journey, his own life.”
...more

flag 20 likes · Like · see review

Jun 24, 2011 Edita rated it it was amazing

Shelves: my-favourite-books, orhan-pamuk

[…] the dividing line between Being and Nothingness was sound, because everything that passed from the spiritual to the material world had its own sound; even the ‘most silent’ objects made a distinct sound when knocked together. The most advanced sounds were, of course, words; words were the magic building blocks of the exalted thing we called speech and they were made up of letters. Those wishing to understanding the meaning of existence and the sanctity of life and see God’s manifestations he ...more

flag 19 likes · Like · see review

Oct 26, 2015 Vonia rated it liked it

Shelves: unique-chapter-titles, religion, everything-changes-on-the-last-page, marriage, location-as-character, life-reflections, dysfunctional-families, war, told-in-flashbacks, wanted-to-like-more-than-i-did

I get it. Not all authors write in the same style, the same proficiency, the same genre, nor the same level of whatever readers want in each of their books. That is why there are novels that are more successful than others within their work. Perhaps, therefore, there should be no real sympathy for me here, but Orhan Pamuk's The Museum of Innocence was by far one of my all-time-favorites, a definite 5 Star. Sadly, I have read the more if guys works, increasingly desperately trying to find one tha I get it. Not all authors write in the same style, the same proficiency, the same genre, nor the same level of whatever readers want in each of their books. That is why there are novels that are more successful than others within their work. Perhaps, therefore, there should be no real sympathy for me here, but Orhan Pamuk's The Museum of Innocence was by far one of my all-time-favorites, a definite 5 Star. Sadly, I have read the more if guys works, increasingly desperately trying to find one that is even clear to such greatness; the closest has been a pathetic 3.5 Stars. Le sigh. Although I hate to admit it, finding another work from Pamuk very similar in personal preference to The Museum of Innocence will be difficult, since I have noticed that it is the least politically centered. It is there if choose, asking with his Turkish background, cultural notes, etceteras, that has become guys trademark, but starkly less so. More so, it focuses far more on psychological and physiological ideas, romance and true love. Which I obviously have a weakness for. Accepting but not quite accepting this, we shall move on to The Black Book. Honestly, my least favorite from Oamuk so far. Almost completely revolving around politics, which were honestly confusing for me to fully comprehend.

The main characters. Galip, the narrator. Ruya, his wife whom disappears early on in the story, never outweighing the reader with her voice. Celal, her brother, a famous political newspaper columnist, who secretly suffers from an undefined memory disorder. Other notable characters include thorities trying to find Celal, as well as a devoted reader, stalkerishly knowledgeable regarding the intimate miniature and nuances in Celal's life; possibly violent and trying to locate Celal whom had disappeared asking with Ruya. This this man is actually speaking to Galip, whom becomes an extremely unreliable narrator as he puts himself into Celal's shoes. Literally. He soon send to even forget which is the real him, what is real and what is a dream or his imagination. Along with the reader.

The focus of this novel ends up being identity. For example, everything we do is essentially an imitation of someone else, something else- whether a fictional character, sometime we know, someone we do not. Who is, of course, imitating someone else or something else. And so on. A barber asked Celal a couple questions that changed his life and therefore play an important part in the story: "Do you have trouble being yourself?"; " Is there a way a man can be only himself?" The answer- at least according to The Black Book- is "No".

The chapters in this book alternate between Celal's columns and the story presently taking place with Galip searching for him and his wife Ruya. I far preferred the columns, as they were beautifully and lyrically written, straightforward with none of the mystical confusion found in the other chapters, with far more interesting content.

My favorite was the one titled, "Alaaddin's Shop", which tells the shopkeeper's story; his older-than-time store that sells everything from rare toys to old comics, chocolate bars to pink backgammon dice, pencil sharpeners shaped like Dutch Windwills to archived newspapers, sexology annuals to prayer books. Being the only fully stocked marketplace in his town for so many years, Alaaddin certainly has much to tell.

My second favorite column was that which told the story of a young Prince Enfendi. He was so enamored with the idea of staying true to oneself that he dedicated his entire life to it. Alas, this is a very difficult thing to do. Impossible if you were to take it literally. The Prince hope to live without any influence from anyone. He threw away all the books he had so as to not be influenced by greater minds. He no longer meet with anyone he had an affinity for, to avoid influence. He hired servants to extinguish all unique scents within his vicinity for fear of eliciting nostalgic memories. He began to see woman whom he specifically disliked, so he could not be influenced by his desire to fulfill her desires. Unfortunately, he found himself caring more than ever for these women, as they were his only link to the outside world. Prince Enfendi was left with nothing but his devoted scribe, who transcribed his dying words. ...more

flag 17 likes · Like · see review

Jun 29, 2010 Steve rated it liked 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 moved 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 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.
...more

flag 17 likes · Like · see review

Dec 24, 2015 Vit Babenco rated it really liked it

When I had read The Black Book I wasn’t disenchanted but I wasn’t enchanted either.
“I thought of the pit which used to be right next to the building, the bottomless pit that had inspired shivers of fear at night, not only in me but in all the pretty children, girls, and adults who lived on all the floors. It seethed with bats, poisonous snakes, rats, and scorpions like a well in a tale of fantasy. I had a feeling it was the very pit described in Şeyh Galip’s Beauty and Love and mentioned in Rumi ...more

flag 13 likes · Like · see review

Sep 19, 2016 Michael Finocchiaro rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: novels, turkish-21st-c, nobel-lit, fiction

In this brilliant tour de force, Orhan Pamuk discusses language, writing, and the meaning of identity over a backdrop story of love and mystery. This being the 3rd book of his after having read My Name is Red and Snow, I am in awe of his story-telling agility. It is as beguiling as the stories inside of stories inside of stories inside 1001 Nights. I especially loved the famous "When the Bosphorus Dried Up" story and the one about the mural and the mirror. The history of Hurufism sent me to wiki ...more

flag 13 likes · Like · see review

Aug 13, 2009 Nick rated it liked 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 through. In 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 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! ...more

flag 11 likes · Like · see review

Mar 17, 2014 Karl-O rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: literary-fiction, mystery, to-be-read-again, turkey

Who you really are? On the surface, this seems like a question already posed elsewhere with such banality and tedium that some would be happy to declare that they don’t care about the question, let alone a possible answer. However, you can’t help but to think about your identity while riding the roller-coaster that Pamuk manages to pull-off in The Black Book. Like all great minds, Pamuk knows very well that attempting to answer such a question is quite complicated, though he is committed to taki Who you really are? On the surface, this seems like a question already posed elsewhere with such banality and tedium that some would be happy to declare that they don’t care about the question, let alone a possible answer. However, you can’t help but to think about your identity while riding the roller-coaster that Pamuk manages to pull-off in The Black Book. Like all great minds, Pamuk knows very well that attempting to answer such a question is quite complicated, though he is committed to taking it seriously. He gives glimpses of different possible routes to tackle the question, including the compassionate view (for someone as lonely as himself) that it is impossible to live - as an individual or as a nation - in a meaningful way without trying to become somebody else.

My grandparents and their families hail from Diyarbakir in present day Turkey. In 1915, they fled their homes and found themselves in Syria due to massive deportation and massacres known collectively as The Armenian Genocide. I was born in Aleppo and hence had a sort of double connection to this book. First, my Armenian background with its extensive affinities and similarities to Turkish culture that goes both ways despite what the two archenemies will want you think. And second, through my childhood that was spent in Aleppo, a city that is to a great extent similar to Istanbul, in that though it has mainly an Islamic heritage, was and is home to people from different faiths and world-views. With its mosques, churches, narrow streets and bustling daily life, I was really thinking the book was talking a great deal about myself and where I come from. Though Aleppo is not torn between east and west like Istanbul, as an Armenian-Syrian reading this book, I couldn’t but see myself in it.

To return to the original question, the novel is constructed loosely as a detective fiction in which Galip, a middle aged lawyer, sets out in a journey to the streets and veins of Istanbul to find his detective-novel-loving wife, Ruya, who is also his cousin (an arrangement with a long history in Turkish and Islamic societies.) One night, Ruya leaves unexpectedly with a small note that doesn't mention where or why she is leaving. This quest for meaning guised as a search for his wife becomes a journey of self-discovery that echoes Pamuk’s question about Turkish identity. The tragic ending of the book is beautifully linked with the collective Turkish question, yet Pamuk doesn’t overstate the link. His is a personal journey as well that explores himself as an author by asking himself why, at all, he is writing? why is it that some choose to tell stories? is it the only thing that keeps them moving in their imaginary journeys?

The book is written in a charming format that alternates between the story of Galib’s search for his wife and columns written by his cousin Celal that he comes across. In each of these columns, Celal talks engagingly about his own life as a columnist, topics of historical, political and religious interest in addition to his complains about his supposed gradual loss of memory which symbolises Turkey’s troubled relationship with its own past. Having similar first names, Celal the columnist (with his very fluid personality) and Jalal el-Din Al Rumi (who is buried in Konya) enrich the pages of the novel that really unfolds like a great symphony. I will undoubtedly read this book more than twice. ...more

flag 11 likes · Like · see review

Sep 01, 2017 Farhan Khalid rated it really liked it

Shelves: history, nobel, turkey, novel

Memory is a garden

The rain in his dream was the deepest blue

Nothing can ever be as shocking as life — Except writing

I remember, I remember so as not to forget!

These are the immortal tales I’ve always longed to tell

Rüya seemed haunted by the joys and pleasures that had slipped beyond her grasp

Galip still felt the terrible eye gazing down at him

Sighs rising and trembling through the timeless air

The life we live is someone else’s dream

There were young people who at certain times in their lives fell ...more

flag 10 likes · Like · see review

Aug 02, 2020 Richard Newton rated it it was amazing

Shelves: fiction-and-literature

This booked just squeezed five stars for me. It is not perfect, but it is an interesting and well written book.

What is it about? Well there is a superficial story and you can read it just for that story - the mystery Galip tries to unravel when he wants to find where his missing wife and older cousin have gone. It does intrigue and at times is a page turner, but it is too odd at times to really read for that story alone. Below this it seems to me to be about many things - about writing and bein ...more

flag 7 likes · Like · see review

Mar 18, 2009 Christopher rated it it was amazing

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.

The wr ...more

flag 7 likes · Like · see review

Feb 26, 2010 Tim rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

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 ...more

flag 7 likes · Like · see review

Jan 13, 2008 Irwan rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: finished

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, ano ...more

flag 7 likes · Like · see review

Sep 07, 2014 Manab rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, favourites-2014

One day I read this book, and my life fell lopsided.

flag 7 likes · Like · see review

Feb 26, 2018 Bob Newman rated it really liked it

Shelves: turkey-and-lit

Plotless in Istanbul,---but intriguing nonetheless

Nobody could say THE BLACK BOOK is a thriller, but it is thrilling writing. An Istanbul lawyer's wife disappears. A related columnist also disappears. The lawyer looks for them. That's about it. But the search and the thinking is the thing. Pamuk's style blends Proust with Borges. If you find that intriguing, read the book. Pamuk manages to combine intimate details of life in the modern city of Istanbul with tales of Sufi masters, long ago execut ...more

flag 6 likes · Like · see review

Aug 06, 2011 Rodrigo rated it it was ok · review of another edition

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, but although the story is brilliantly written, it never got to the point of being a book you can't put down. In fact, putting it down was sometimes a relief! Finishing it actually became a challenge for me! Ju ...more

flag 6 likes · Like · see review

Aug 29, 2009 John rated it it was amazing

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 the military coup of 1980, though ...more

flag 6 likes · Like · see review

Jul 04, 2009 David rated it it was amazing

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. ...more

flag 6 likes · Like · see review

Feb 28, 2018 Simona rated it really liked it

Shelves: review

The story is placed in a rather simple frame - a man looking for a missing wife and uncle. From here on, things are a little more complicated ... the story (well, many of them) is complex and very dense at all levels. A rich, picturesque, detailed language with which author paints an atmosphere filled with sadness, melancholy in individuals and in the city - Istanbul (which is a completely independent character) ...and all of them are in a constant search for identity - personal, and through ind ...more

flag 5 likes · Like · see review

Mar 30, 2008 Martin rated it liked 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 lost quite a bit in ...more

flag 5 likes · Like · see review

Feb 03, 2017 Nihal Vrana rated it did not like it · review of another edition

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 forgettabl ...more

flag 5 likes · Like · see review

Jan 27, 2015 Isla McKetta rated it it was amazing

Meditations on duality, identity, mystery and writing all wrapped in a story so detailed it takes a luscious forever to read.

My new favorite closing lines of a novel: "Because nothing is as surprising as life. Except for writing. Except for writing. Yes, of course, except for writing, the only consolation." ...more

flag 5 likes · Like · see review

« previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 … next »

new topic
Discuss This Book

topics	posts	views	last activity
Club littéraire p...: Dîner littéraire du 18 octobre 2020 à 19h00 autour de Le Livre noir d'Orhan Pamuk	2	7	Oct 12, 2020 03:20AM
Goodreads Librari...: Add ISBN-10	3	201	Jun 03, 2018 01:58PM
'Okumak' üzerine	1	7	Mar 16, 2018 09:49AM
Indian Readers: The Black Book (Reb and Girish)	55	30	Oct 10, 2017 04:02AM
Club de escritore...: KARA KITAP	1	13	Dec 03, 2016 08:48AM
ماذا يوجد في الكتاب الأسود !	89	230	Jun 17, 2014 02:07PM
Turkish Reading C...: Kara Kitap ile ilgili tartışma	1	44	Feb 01, 2014 12:51PM

Readers also enjoyed

See similar books…

Genres

Fiction

283 users

Asian Literature > Turkish Literature

88 users

Cultural > Turkish

67 users

Mystery

63 users

Novels

49 users

Literature

46 users

Nobel Prize

32 users

Literary Fiction

20 users

Contemporary

20 users

Literature > 20th Century

14 users

See top shelves…

About Orhan Pamuk

Orhan Pamuk

7,919 followers

Orhan Pamuk was born in Istanbul in 1952 and grew up in a large family similar to those which he describes in his novels Cevdet Bey and His Sons and The Black Book, in the wealthy westernised district of Nisantasi. As he writes in his autobiographical book Istanbul, from his childhood until the age of 22 he devoted himself largely to painting and dreamed of becoming an artist. After graduating fro Orhan Pamuk was born in Istanbul in 1952 and grew up in a large family similar to those which he describes in his novels Cevdet Bey and His Sons and The Black Book, in the wealthy westernised district of Nisantasi. As he writes in his autobiographical book Istanbul, from his childhood until the age of 22 he devoted himself largely to painting and dreamed of becoming an artist. After graduating from the secular American Robert College in Istanbul, he studied architecture at Istanbul Technical University for three years, but abandoned the course when he gave up his ambition to become an architect and artist. He went on to graduate in journalism from Istanbul University, but never worked as a journalist. At the age of 23 Pamuk decided to become a novelist, and giving up everything else retreated into his flat and began to write.

His first novel Cevdet Bey and His Sons was published seven years later in 1982. The novel is the story of three generations of a wealthy Istanbul family living in Nisantasi, Pamuk's own home district. The novel was awarded both the Orhan Kemal and Milliyet literary prizes. The following year Pamuk published his novel The Silent House, which in French translation won the 1991 Prix de la découverte européene. The White Castle (1985) about the frictions and friendship between a Venetian slave and an Ottoman scholar was published in English and many other languages from 1990 onwards, bringing Pamuk his first international fame. The same year Pamuk went to America, where he was a visiting scholar at Columbia University in New York from 1985 to 1988. It was there that he wrote most of his novel The Black Book, in which the streets, past, chemistry and texture of Istanbul are described through the story of a lawyer seeking his missing wife. This novel was published in Turkey in 1990, and the French translation won the Prix France Culture. The Black Book enlarged Pamuk's fame both in Turkey and internationally as an author at once popular and experimental, and able to write about past and present with the same intensity. In 1991 Pamuk's daughter Rüya was born. That year saw the production of a film Hidden Face, whose script by Pamuk was based on a one-page story in The Black Book.

His novel The New Life, about young university students influenced by a mysterious book, was published in Turkey in 1994 and became one of the most widely read books in Turkish literature. My Name Is Red, about Ottoman and Persian artists and their ways of seeing and portraying the non-western world, told through a love story and family story, was published in 1998. This novel won the French Prix du meilleur livre étranger, the Italian Grinzane Cavour (2002) and the International IMPAC Dublin literary award (2003). From the mid-1990s Pamuk took a critical stance towards the Turkish state in articles about human rights and freedom of thought, although he took little interest in politics. Snow, which he describes as “my first and last political novel” was published in 2002. In this book set in the small city of Kars in northeastern Turkey he experimented with a new type of “political novel”, telling the story of violence and tension between political Islamists, soldiers, secularists, and Kurdish and Turkish nationalists. Snow was selected as one of the best 100 books of 2004 by The New York Times. In 1999 a selection of his articles on literature and culture written for newspapers and magazines in Turkey and abroad, together with a selection of writings from his private notebooks, was published under the title Other Colours. Pamuk's most recent book, Istanbul, is a poetical work that is hard to classify, combining the author's early memoirs up to the age of 22, and an essay about the city of Istanbul, illustrated with photographs from his own album, and pictures by western painters and Turkish photographers. ...more

Books by Orhan Pamuk

More…

Interview with Orhan Pamuk

Ever-changing Istanbul stars in A Strangeness in My Mind, as a boza seller observes the city over four decades while searching his own heart for love.

Trivia About The Black Book

3 trivia questions

More quizzes & trivia...

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.” — 75 likes

“We live but for a short time, we see but very little, and we know almost nothing; so, at least, let's do some dreaming. Have yourself a very good Sunday, my dear readers.” — 30 likes

More quotes…

See a Problem?

Preview — The Black Book by Orhan Pamuk

The Black Book

Get A Copy

Friend Reviews

Reader Q&A

Lists with This Book

Community Reviews

new topic
Discuss This Book

Readers also enjoyed

Genres

About Orhan Pamuk

Books by Orhan Pamuk

Related Articles

Trivia About The Black Book

Quotes from The Black Book

See a Problem?

Preview — The Black Book by Orhan Pamuk

The Black Book

Get A Copy

Friend Reviews

Reader Q&A

Lists with This Book

Community Reviews

new topicDiscuss This Book

Readers also enjoyed

Genres

About Orhan Pamuk

Books by Orhan Pamuk

Related Articles

Trivia About The Black Book

Quotes from The Black Book

new topic
Discuss This Book