Sunday Book Review - The New York Times

‘A Strangeness in My Mind,’ by Orhan Pamuk

By MARTIN RIKEROCT. 23, 2015

Credit Roman Muradov

Though otherwise accurate, the subtitle to Orhan Pamuk’s new novel — “Being the Adventures and Dreams of Mevlut Karatas, a Seller of Boza, and of His Friends, and Also a Portrait of Life in Istanbul Between 1969 and 2012 From Many Different Points of View” — makes the book’s complicated ambitions appear simple, if not quaint. “Have no fear,” it seems to say, “we’ll merely be synthesizing over 40 years of modern history from one of the most culturally tumultuous cities in the world, while also following a large cast of characters crossing lines of class, politics, religion and gender, all of which will collect around a lowly street vendor’s ‘adventures and dreams.’ What could be breezier?” In fact, the truth of “A Strangeness in My Mind” lies somewhere between Pamuk’s playfulness and my knottier version — for this is a book that champions simplicity even as it wrestles with the complexity of an ever-changing city, and attempts to manage as plainly as possible a necessarily sprawling tale.
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