A Strangeness in My Mind

Starred review from August 24, 2015
This mesmerizing ninth novel from Nobel laureate Pamuk (Silent House) is a sweeping epic chronicling Istanbul's metamorphosis from 1969 to 2012, as seen through the eyes of humble rural Anatolian migrant workers who come to the increasingly teeming metropolis in search of new opportunities in love and commerce. Though relayed through different points of view, the fable-like story's chief protagonist is the ruminative Mevlut Karatas, son of a cantankerous peddler of yogurt and boza (a thick, fermented wheat drink), who carries on his father's trade despite its fading popularity. The book includes a dip into Mevlut's childhood in Central Anatolia and his move to Istanbul with his father when he is 12. He later meets the beautiful Samiha at a wedding and is tricked by his cousin into eloping with Samiha's less attractive older sister, Rayiha. Mevlut and Rayiha have a happy marriage nonetheless and raise two daughters as he tries to gain a foothold in business. Mevlut's progression from naïve, perpetually searching wanderer to a more fulfilled and wizened soul, despite his mostly unsuccessful attempts at getting a leg up financially, is laid bare. His walkabouts and skirmishes with his family are engrossing, but what really stands out is Pamuk's treatment of Istanbul's evolution into a noisy, corrupt, and modernized city. This is a thoroughly immersive journey through the arteries of Pamuk's culturally rich yet politically volatile and class- and gender-divided homeland.

Starred review from September 1, 2015
Nobel laureate Pamuk (The Museum of Innocence, 2009, etc.) sets a good-natured Everyman wandering through Istanbul's changing social and political landscape. Tricked by his scheming cousin Suleyman into writing impassioned love letters for three years to Rayiha, Mevlut finds himself eloping with the older sister of the girl whose dark eyes intoxicated him at a relative's wedding. (Suleyman gave him the wrong name because he wanted the beautiful youngest for himself.) This being Turkey in 1982, and Mevlut being easygoing in the extreme, rejecting a woman who has compromised herself by agreeing to run away with him is unthinkable. The young couple prove to be well-matched and quite happy, although Mevlut doesn't make much money. His checkered day jobs in food services, selling rice with chickpeas from his own cart and ineffectually managing a cafe among them, give the author a chance to expatiate on Istanbul's endemic corruption, both municipal and personal. Pamuk celebrates the city's vibrant traditional culture-and mourns its passing-in wonderfully atmospheric passages on Mevlut's nightly adventures selling boza, a fermented wheat beverage he carries through the streets of Istanbul and delivers directly to the apartments of those who call to him from their windows. Although various characters from time to time break into the third-person narration to address the reader, this is the only postmodern flourish. If anything, Pamuk recalls the great Victorian novelists as he ranges confidently from near-documentary passages on real estate machinations and the privatization of electrical service to pensive meditations on the gap between people's public posturing and private beliefs. The oppression of women is quietly but angrily depicted as endemic; even nice-guy Mevlut assumes his right to dictate Rayiha's behavior (with ultimately disastrous consequences), while his odious right-wing cousin Korkut treats his wife like a servant. As Pamuk follows his believably flawed protagonist and a teeming cast of supporting players across five decades, Turkey's turbulent politics provide a thrumming undercurrent of unease. Rich, complex, and pulsing with urban life: one of this gifted writer's best.

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Starred review from September 15, 2015
Nobel laureate Pamuk's (The Museum of Innocence, 2009) profound love for his city, Istanbul, is the life force in this intricately detailed and patterned fairy-tale-like novel that follows the footsteps and life of a humble, contemplative street vendor. Mevlut leaves his village at age 12, in 1969, to join his father in Istanbul, where he ekes out a living selling yogurt door to door. As Mevlut comes into his own and finds deep meaning in the traditions of street peddling, especially his magical nighttime route selling boza, a fermented beverage he comes to believe is holy, he develops a mystical connection to the rhythms and secrets of the city, which lets you hide the strangeness in your mind inside its teeming multitudes. After catching a mere glimpse of the prettiest of three sisters (the eldest is married to his older cousin), Mevlut secretly courts her by writing poetic love letters, until, with a cousin's help, they elope. But there's a catch, a bit of treachery that infuses this many-voiced, multigenerational novel with subtle suspense. As his meditative hero walks the streets for five decades, balancing his wooden yoke on his shoulders, Pamuk, a deeply compassionate and poetic writer, illuminates dreadful and dazzling Istanbul's violent upheavals and ceaseless metamorphosis, women's struggles for freedom, and the strange vicissitudes of love. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Each new book by internationally revered Pamuk garners extensive media coverage and elevated reader interest.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)

Starred review from September 15, 2015

Nobel Prize winner Pamuk has added another major work to his oeuvre with this carefully detailed and compassionately told tale of life in Istanbul over the last 60 years. Mevlut leaves his rural village as a child and moves to Istanbul to join his father in making a subsistence living as a street vendor. As he grows older, he falls for a girl he sees at a relative's wedding and spends years writing her long, passionate love letters. But when they elope, he discovers that his new wife is not the young woman to whom he has been writing. He and Rayiha have a long and blissfully happy marriage, but the deceptions related to the love letters reverberate throughout the novel. During their years together with their two daughters, they witness political turmoil, military coups, earthquakes, and rapid growth and upheaval as millions of new residents arrive and modern technologies change everything. In the end, Mevlut continues to sell boza at night, haunting the city like a voice from the past. VERDICT Although depicting a faraway land, the novel's central concerns are human nature, communication, and interpersonal relationships, and this great writer explores these themes with a universal warmth, wit, and intelligence. [See Prepub Alert, 4/20/15.]--James Coan, SUNY at Oneonta Lib.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 15, 2015

Nobel Prize winner Pamuk's first novel since 2009's The Museum of Innocence (The Silent House was published here in 2012 but written in the 1980s), this work centers on 12-year-old Mevlut Karatas, who travels from Central Anatolia to Istanbul and survives by hawking a traditional Turkish drink called boza on the streets. He's so hapless he inadvertently marries the sister of a girl he loves, yet as he wanders the streets, enthralled by the city's glorious history and its booming future, he senses a satisfying "strangeness" that finally leads him to recognize what he's really wanted in life.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 15, 2015

Nobel Prize winner Pamuk has added another major work to his oeuvre with this carefully detailed and compassionately told tale of life in Istanbul over the last 60 years. Mevlut leaves his rural village as a child and moves to Istanbul to join his father in making a subsistence living as a street vendor. As he grows older, he falls for a girl he sees at a relative's wedding and spends years writing her long, passionate love letters. But when they elope, he discovers that his new wife is not the young woman to whom he has been writing. He and Rayiha have a long and blissfully happy marriage, but the deceptions related to the love letters reverberate throughout the novel. During their years together with their two daughters, they witness political turmoil, military coups, earthquakes, and rapid growth and upheaval as millions of new residents arrive and modern technologies change everything. In the end, Mevlut continues to sell boza at night, haunting the city like a voice from the past. VERDICT Although depicting a faraway land, the novel's central concerns are human nature, communication, and interpersonal relationships, and this great writer explores these themes with a universal warmth, wit, and intelligence. [See Prepub Alert, 4/20/15.]--James Coan, SUNY at Oneonta Lib.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 4, 2016
Reader Lee has a pleasing baritone voice and a slightly clipped British accent that’s easy to settle into. Fortunately, he doesn’t need to create numerous other voices, because even though the story is told from the perspective of multiple characters, they’re delineated clearly by the author in sections. The chief protagonist, Mevlut Karatas¸, sells boza (a thick, fermented wheat drink) in Istanbul. For more than four decades from 1969 to 2012, he walks the streets at night with a carrying pole on his shoulders, calling out his wares. We follow Mevlut’s through the years, from childhood to marriage, and walk with him through the poor, middle-class, and rich neighborhoods of the city. We watch Istanbul expand and diversify. Along with Mevlut, we struggle with the cultural, political, and religious evolutions that alter everyone’s lives. Nobel laureate Pamuk has written a lyrical ode to the city and the people he loves. Lee takes us on Pamuk’s wondrous journey through Istanbul, its people, places, and history. A Knopf hardcover.