Istanbul: Memories of a City

£9.99

Orhan Pamuk’s extraordinarily beautiful “Istanbul” won the 2006 Nobel Prize for literature- once you have picked up and read this brilliant work, you will be in no doubt as to why it did.

Arguably Turkey's greatest living novelist, here he guides us through the monuments and lost paradises, dilapidated Ottoman villas, back streets and waterways of Istanbul - the city of his birth and the home of his imagination.

Written at a time of personal upheaval for Pamuk, and the nostalgic beauty of the book is often bittersweet as the lines between Islam and secular society rub awkwardly. In its citation, the Nobel Academy said of the book:

"In the quest for the melancholic soul of his native city, [Pamuk] has discovered new symbols for the clash and interlacing of cultures."

“Istanbul” is one of those books that you will truly never forget, and will most likely prompt you to see it for yourself.