The Black Book

Product Details

Author : Orhan Pamuk
Binding : Hardcover
EAN : 9780571168927
Number of Pages : 416
Product Group : Book
Publication Date : 1995-11-01
Publisher : Faber and Faber

ASIN : 0571168922

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Editorial Reviews

*******

'A glorious flight of dark, fantastic invention . . . It offers many pleasures, Gothic, Borgesian and other, the best of which is a vision of Istanbul as a city of sinister complexity.' Patrick McGrath

Independent on Sunday

'One of the freshest, most original voices in contemporary fiction.'

Times Literary Supplement

'Quite wonderful . . . It is a fiction which tackles, again and again, the question of Turkey's shaky cultural identity.'

Observer

'Up there with the best of Eco, Calvino, Borges and Marquez.'

Book Description

'The Black Book' is a stunning tapestry of Middle Eastern and Islamic culture that confirms Pamuk's reputation as a writer of international stature.

Synopsis

A tapestry of Middle East and Islamic culture, by the author of "The White Castle". Galip, an Istanbul lawyer, suspects that his vanished wife is hiding out with her half-brother, a newspaper columnist whose fame Galip envies. Galip plays the part of private investigator, with dire consequences.

From the Back Cover

Galip is an Istanbul lawyer whose wife has vanished. Could she be hiding out with her brother? And if so, why isn't anyone in his flat? Playing the part of private investigator, Galip assumes the brother's role. But the amateur sleuth soon finds himself descending deeper and deeper into an extraordinary mystery. Richly atmospheric, 'The Black Book' is a labyrinthine novel suffused with the sights, sounds and scents of contemporary Istanbul.

Customer Reviews

Plot-less and pointless worthless rubbish (2008-07-31)

Not worth the paper it is printed on really. Forget all the over the top reviews of this book as a "Mystical tour of the Orient" "Magic carpet ride blah blah blah" Forget the fact that Orhan Pamuk has a PR organisation behind him that would make most politicians blush, forget the fact that Orhan pamuk is famous only for the fact that he is the only Turkish writer that has his books published in English and Turkish at the same time thus, ensuring he will get maximum coverage, forget the fact that he is almost a walking advert for Milliyet newspaper (and I am sure that fact will have nothing to do with him having such shining reviews in Milliyet and affiliated newspapers) forget all that and just look at the book for what it is and what quality this book is. No, this is not some "mystical tour" rather it is a collection of worthless ramblings disguised as the writings of an intellectual snob. Pamuk even says himself that he was raised in a household where he knew virtually nothing about Islam apart from seeing the odd servant praying now and again so to consider him any kind of authority on the east is simply laughable his upbringing was probably more western than most of us. So he takes us to the dark underground of backstreet Istanbul, but Nakshibandi Sheikhs? Give me a break the book is set in Beyoglu, he grew up in Nisantasi the nearest he got to a Naqshbandi was sitting on a train next to one or watching late night Star TV shock reportage. Back street gangsters, strange left wing groups this book drifts along to nowhere just hundreds of pages of pointless drivel and misquoted books. Just because he throws in a bit about Rumi and quotes ibn Arabi suddenly he is taking the reader on a "mystical tour"? Come on, are we really to be fooled so easily? Imagine if any English or American writer started throwing in quotes from Canterbury Tales, St Nino, The Gospels etc would we suddenly think him/her to be some great writer of modern English literature or would we question his use of such works, question his/her motives and probably laugh at such a poor attempt at trying to look smart. There is no plot to this book and little point either. pamuk uses the same formula in every book he writes. East meets West, throw in a bit of ibn Arabi and Rumi (makes the western audience interested and the liberals look like they care) throw in a few left wing groups (keeps your PR machine of Milliyet and Cumhuriyet happy) and just ramble about nothing the reader is so puzzled they convince themselves that it must be good because they couldn't understand a thing. Buy this book if you must but please, do not compare this joker to greats like Kafka.

A review by Philip Spires (2007-10-13)

I have visited Turkey, but not Istanbul. It's one of those iconic places that keeps cropping up in travel plans, but then gets overlooked, possibly because its name fits so easily into my thoughts that I convince myself I have already been there. Having just read Orhan Pamuk's The Black Book, that illusion will be orders of magnitude stronger. Orhan Pamuk won the 2006 Nobel Prize for literature and this seems to have spurned new translations of his work, new versions which hopefully can widen his readership in the English-speaking world.The Black Book is a gigantic work. And, in the way that I suspect most readers might understand the term, there is no plot. Suffice it to say that Galip wakes up one morning and his wife has disappeared. He assumes she has gone off to seek out her first husband, Celal, a well-known newspaper columnist. Galip sets off to find Celal and, he assumes, his wife, but strangely the journalist has also disappeared. As a means to help him track down the two missing people, Galip immerses himself in Celal's life, his writing and, gradually, his very identity. Effectively he becomes the person he is seeking. He re-reads his past work and discovers unknown things about his own, his wife's and her former husband's past. By then, however, we cannot be sure if we are dealing with reminiscences of Celal, Galip's interpretations of them, Galip's reworking of them, or, indeed, Galip's own words presented as if they were those of Celal.But the plot in The Black Book is almost irrelevant. It's not a book that one reads to discover what happens. It's a book that's replete with flavour, experience and history, and the reader feasts on vast helpings of all three.Byzantium, Constantinople, Istanbul - let's face it, there is no other city on earth that has been named three times and where, on each occasion, that name has passed into language as an expression of political, strategic, religious and economic pre-eminence. It's a city that bridges continents, ideologies and faiths. Nowhere else on earth has a greater claim to the very quintessence of humanity than Istanbul. And yet modern Istanbul is a Turkish city, and perhaps its most fascinating aspect is its potential to mirror contemporary debates on religion versus secularism, tradition versus modernity, imperial past versus global present.The Black Book has thirty-six chapters, each having its own title and prefacing quotation. The form, at least in part, is its content, in that each chapter could be read as if it were an article written by Celal or by Galip impersonating Celal. There is no linear narrative. We experience what inspired the writer and there is no ordering of time or place. But we feel we are in that city. We feel we are living its history, whatever that might be. And we feel we are experiencing contemporary debates on its and its people's identity. The city is central to everything in the book, with its multiple histories and allegiances mixed into the melting pot of its contemporary form.Throughout, Galip finds he gradually becomes his quarry, Celal. He trades identities and roles, but never permanently, never for sure. In this way the characters become the city, whose sense of place and multiplicity of identities pervade all, thus mirroring the apparent confusion of its - and humanity's - complexity. But the people eventually are always welcomed by some aspect of the city's - and humanity's - multi-faceted nature.The Black Book is a work that demands to be re-read, but not because it is in any way a difficult or impenetrable read. I have never been to Istanbul, but like the book, I feel it will be an experience that, once tried, will demand to be re-visited.

An inconspicuous classic (2007-01-10)

Darkly evocative, wackily postmodern, the writing of 2006 Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk is a treasure trove little known in Britain. The decaying and repressed Istanbul of 1980 is brought to life magnificently in The Black Book, which roughly follows a man called Galip as he searches both for clues and for his own identity following the disappearance of his wife. Of all the languages written in Latin characters, Turkish is surely the most unlike English. It was written in Arabic characters until 1928, and so constructing a sentence mainly involves writing one word and adding at least five suffixes. Given this, the quality of the new translation is incredible. Much of this fascinating book is a joy to read, and much of the prose is as good as any I've read in English in a long time.

Not easy, but amazing - and important (2006-12-04)

Readers of Snow and My Name is Red will not be disappointed by this long-awaited new translation of Pamuk's most celebrated novel. Pamuk's evocation of Istanbul in the repressive mid-1980s - a crumbling, fearful city of dreams - is masterful. The episodic plot - at once a retelling of Dante's search for Beatrice in the circles of hell and a Kafka-esque quest for what it means to be yourself - can seem slow and ponderous at times, although enlivened by the newspaper columns of the mysterious Celal, but it is the ideas that Pamuk is wrestling with that make this not only an amazing piece of literature, but an important and significant contribution. It isn't an easy read, but it will stay with you long after you have finished reading.A word about the translation. It is brilliant, one of the best renderings of Turkish into English this reviewer has ever had the pleasure to read.

a visit into your own blackness (2006-10-13)

His best book for sure...a journey to search for a woman named Hulya(dream)and a book about dreams...never knowing what is real and what is unreal...a book that changed my life

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