Istanbul: Memories and the City

Istanbul: Memories and the City is a largely autobiographical memoir by Orhan Pamuk, published in 2003 and marked by a deeply melancholic tone. The book traces the vast cultural change that has shaken Turkey, caught in the unending struggle between the modern and a receding past, and it serves as a eulogy to the lost tradition of the extended joint family. Above all, it is a book about the Bosphorus and Istanbul's long history with the strait.

Pamuk wrote it at a moment of great personal fragility, when he was on the verge of depression. Every morning, he later recalled, he would take a cold shower, sit down, remember and write, always attentive to the beauty of the book. His family was furious at how they were portrayed, especially his brother; the author acknowledges that he lost him because of the book and may also have hurt his mother.

The personal memories are interwoven with literary essays about writers and artists connected in some way to Istanbul, among them the nineteenth-century Western engraver Antoine Ignace Melling, to whom an entire chapter is devoted. The book was translated into English by Maureen Freely in 2005.