A Strangeness in My Mind by Orhan Pamuk

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I think this is Pamuk's best work in English translation since Istanbul: Memories and the City, possibly even My Name is Red. Chronicling the life of street vendor Mevlut Karatas and his extended family through decades of hard work as migrants in Istanbul, Pamuk achieves not only to tell a captivating, human story, but also to explore the material realities of migration, urbanisation, and modernity. But as we follow Mevlut's nightly walks around Istanbul selling the traditional boza liquor, there is also room to linger on his personal ruminations around the distance between the private and the public, and his fundamental sense of strangeness. As this motif mingles with his memories of the fading Istanbul of his childhood, quickly giving way to today's modern metropolis, Pamuk conjures up a vivid sense of deep and lingering melancholy - which is a very good thing! A wonderful novel.



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