In his latest autobiography, Istanbul: City and Memories, acclaimed author Orhan Pamuk cleverly weaves in vivid imageries of Istanbul with great depth as he guides the reader like a companion through his journey as an artist.

He paints the city in a riveting fashion: “1950s Chevrolets that would be museum pieces in any Western City but serve here as shared taxis, huffing and puffing up the city’s narrow alleys and dirty thoroughfares; of the buses packed with passengers; of the mosques whose plates and rain gutters are forever stolen, of the city cemeteries that seem like gateways to a second world and of their cypress trees.”

Pamuk writes beautifully, portraying the melancholy, reminiscent of the city, and his life in the Pamuk Apartments, in equal balance. Landmark images of dilapidated mansions, lost paradises of the Ottoman Empire and the harbours of old are sporadically positioned in the autobiography, depicting eccentric elements of a country at the crossroads between East and West.

It is in such writing that neither the artist nor the beauty of his city is overshadowed by the other. – BY HAJAR MANAF

 

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