In the three decades that Nobel prize-winning author Orhan Pamuk has devoted himself to writing fiction, he has also produced scores of witty, moving, and provocative essays and articles. He engages the work of Nabokov, Kundera, Rushdie, and Vargas Llosa, among others, and he discusses his own books and writing process. We also learn how he lives, as he recounts his successful struggle to quit smoking, describes his relationship with his daughter, and reflects on the controversy he has attracted in recent years. Here is a thoughtful compilation of a brilliant novelist's best nonfiction, offering different perspectives on his lifelong obsessions with loneliness, contentment, and the books and cities that have shaped his experience.
Şemsa Gezgin Libros
Estambul es un retrato, en ocasiones panorámico y en otras íntimo y personal, de una de las ciudades más fascinantes de la Europa que mira a Asia. Pero es también una autobiografía, la del propio Orhan Pamuk. La historia da comienzo con el capítulo de su infancia, donde Pamuk nos habla sobre su excéntrica familia y su vida en un polvoriento apartamento -«los apartamentos Pamuk», así los denomina- en el centro de la ciudad. El autor recuerda que fue en aquellos días lejanos cuando tomó conciencia de que le había tocado vivir en un espacio plagado de melancolía: residente de un lugar en que arrastra un pasado glorioso y que intenta hacerse un hueco en la «modernidad».Viejos y hermosos edificios en ruinas, estatuas valiosas y mutantes, villas fantasmagóricas y callejuelas secretas donde, por encima de todo, destaca el terapéutico río Bósforo, que en la memoria del narrador es vida, salud y felicidad. Esta elegía sirve para que el autor introduzca a pintores, escritores y célebres asesinos, a través de cuyos ojos el narrador describe la ciudad. Hermoso retrato de una ciudad y una vida, ambas fascinantes por igual.
The year is 1992. Ka, a poet and political exile, returns to Turkey as a journalist, assigned to investigate troubling reports of suicide in the small and mysterious city of Kars on the Turkish border. The snow is falling fast as he arrives, and soon all roads are closed. There's a 'suicide epidemic' amongst young religious women forbidden to wear their headscarves. Islamists are poised to win the local elections and Ka is falling in love with the beautiful and radiant Ipek, now recently divorced. Amid blanketing snowfall and universal suspicion, he finds himself pursued by terrorism in a city wasting away under the shadow of Europe. In the midst of growing religious and political violence, the stage is set for a terrible and desperate act . . . Touching, slyly comic, and humming with cerebral suspense, Snow evokes the spiritual fragility of the non-Western world, its ambivalence about the godless West, and its fury. 'A novel of profound relevance to our present moment' The Times