Istanbul: Memories and the City

A portrait, by turns intimate and panoramic, of one of the world's great cities, by its foremost man of letters, author of the acclaimed novels Snow and My Name Is Red. Orhan Pamuk was born in Istanbul and still lives in the family apartment building where his mother first held him in his arms. His portrait of his city is thus also a self-portrait, refracted by memory and the melancholy—or hüzün—that all Istanbullus share: the sadness that comes of living amid the ruins of a lost empire.