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My first encounter with Pamuk! I wonder why it took me so long to pick up his work! How this book has taken me on a journey!

I would say that reading it is a bold achievement. So much information, so many images. Each chapter must be allowed to ripen within you... to be processed by you. His language has an immediacy that draws you in and makes you want to immerse yourself in his world. In no way can you say that Pamuk is a bore. I never felt that way! He is a person who knows what he will write and how he will connect the elements of his story with historical facts and knowledge. Yes, for me, this author has a lot of knowledge and many provocations.

I got to know the melancholic Istanbul, with its poor neighborhoods, its old architecture, its wooden houses, its narrow streets. As you turn the pages, you sense the sadness that characterizes this city... a rather dark and heavy aura. On one hand, the past and tradition prevail, and on the other hand, there is progressiveness or rather the need for progress and development.

P.S. The edition is excellent as it contains photographic material! Don't be afraid of it and don't be put off by the details! Let it draw you into its images and scents!

Happy reading!

In a unique way, Pamuk transported us to the melancholy of Constantinople (Istanbul). He "emptied" our souls through the streets of the city, the domestic conflicts, and also for his literary quests, choosing 4 Turkish writers...

Good! Let it be (re)read!

I kept the promise and reread it!

"The soul of Istanbul, its power, stems from the Bosphorus" on page 83.

"Melancholy is the point where the city itself and the memories from the images of the city meet" on page 152. And then Pamuk justifies this view in a single-sentence paragraph that is 7 pages long (!!).

There are many pages that the author delves into and emerges from the melancholy of Istanbul. It is a book that must be read by the friends of Constantinople as well as the author.

In the one month and 13 days that I was engaged in reading the book, I wrote about it at least two or three times and recommended it to everyone. I can claim that it was one of the best I have read in recent times. Pamuk has successfully and believably described the city and told his memories. If you are one of those who live in cities and in my terms are city-loving people, you will enjoy reading the book. Because according to the critic of The Guardian newspaper, this book is a three-faced masterpiece; it describes the body and soul of the city and is a vivid account of the family power games, war and diplomacy, and the conduct of the leaders.

I have always asked myself what it is about the city as a whole, with so many factors influencing its formation and survival, that makes it so attractive to me. Which of the sayings and factors related to the city are so interesting and fascinating? Is it history? Culture? The coexistence of people in a geographical area and the commonalities that this geography gives them? What is it really? Although all these sayings are attractive, to what extent can we talk about them based on facts? For example, when we talk about the spirit of the city, the shape of the city, the story of the city, or anything related to it, what exactly do we mean? Are we talking about a specific reality or our imagination? Writing and talking about the city is like a two-edged sword that simultaneously criticizes reality and imagination, and this makes it impossible to establish a clear boundary between the reality and imagination of cities. Pamuk's book seems to say that it is not necessary to establish a boundary between the imagination and reality of the city to understand it. The city is a mixture of both, and to understand it, we must refer to both factors.

Pamuk seems to want to build a bridge between the city, literature, history, and his memories with this book. He wants to say that the reality of cities is what we think about them. We live in the city and shape it with our thoughts, our questions, and our memories. Pamuk correctly writes on page 452 of the book: "Anything we say about the essence of the city is more a reflection of our own lives and ways of thinking. The city has no center other than us."

There are many similarities between the city that Pamuk writes about and the city where I live. Istanbul and Isfahan are sister cities. Both cities are historical cities that have had days of glory and splendor. They have been capitals and centers of the Sunni and Shia worlds in the 16th and 17th centuries AD. Isfahan fell into decline earlier than Istanbul, perhaps because its sadness is no longer fresh. The sadness of three hundred years has been so ingrained in the fabric of the city that it is no longer as clear. In fact, not much remains of the Safavid era in Isfahan, but the city still carries the memory of the glorious days of the past in some parts of itself. When you walk in the markets and back alleys of the old neighborhoods, you feel a kind of desolate sadness (perhaps less than the sadness of Istanbul). It's as if a glorious and memorable memory is sitting at the back of your mind, and from time to time, a sad smile appears on its face. However, the sadness of Istanbul is fresher. The glorious period of Istanbul was longer and more magnificent than that of Isfahan. Even in the middle of the 19th century AD, when the Ottoman Empire was in decline, Istanbul was still an important and glorious city according to travelers who had seen it. The sadness resulting from its decline, the sadness that Pamuk tries to explain and prove throughout the book, has taken hold of the people of the city.

Another important point, besides the similarity between Isfahan and Istanbul, that led to my kinship with the author was the Eastern vision and mindset that seems to be one of the reasons for our similarity with our Turkish-speaking neighbors. Whenever Pamuk wrote about the mindset of the city dwellers and people and explained their feelings and views towards the city and themselves, I felt that he was talking about the mindset and culture of the people who dominate the cities of Iran. The feeling of inferiority and self-pity in the face of the West, the attempt to resemble Europeans, but at the same time the sense of closeness to the Eastern mindset of the city. I think understanding the culture and mindset that dominates Istanbul and explaining it is one of the strengths of the book that helps the reader feel a closer connection to the book.

One of the few Persian reviews I read about the book made a nice point. Reviews can also have a theme, a theme of sadness, a theme of grief, or a theme of longing. Reading this book, apart from taking me along with the feelings and state of the author and making me know Istanbul a little better, was also accompanied by a deep sense of longing that my friend also mentioned in his review. A longing based on why we have written so little about our cities. Why we have not read them correctly and have not tried to write their past and present in a coherent work. Throughout the time I was reading the book, I was thinking about how skillfully Pamuk writes about Istanbul. He has read everything that has been written about the city and is so familiar with them that he can label them as his memories and takeaways from the city and present a unique and readable story that contains the past and the present. Perhaps we too should write about our cities before the little that remains of their feelings, states, and spirits is destroyed under the bulldozers. First, we should read them well and then write. Certainly, every city has a story that is not without charm.