About this title: 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.
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Binding: S Trade Paperback
Publisher: Harvest Books, Orlando, Florida, U.S.A.
Date Published: 1996
ISBN-13:9780156003292ISBN:0156003295
Description: Very Good. While this book bears some creasing to its spine, it is nonetheless plausibly unread and appears otherwise to be in perfect shape! ! 100% guarantee that you will DIG this book! read more
Description: Good. Former Library book. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Binding: Trade Paperback
Publisher: Harcourt Brace & Company; A Harvest Book, San Diego
Date Published: 1996
ISBN-13:9780156003292ISBN:0156003295
Description: Very Good. 8vo-over 7¾"-9¾" tall. vi, 400 pp.; 21 cm. First published, 1990, under title: Kara kitap. Translated from the Turkish. Firm binding, with one spine crease. Clean inside copy. "Galip roams Istanbul in search of his missing wife. "-Publisher. read more
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Vintage Books USA
Date Published: 2006
ISBN-13:9781400078653ISBN:1400078652
Description: Fine. No dust jacket as issued. Except for small scuffs on bottom of front cover this copy is NEW; never read. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 466 p. Vintage International (Paperback). Audience: General/trade. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Vintage
Date Published: 2006-07-11
ISBN-13:9781400078653ISBN:1400078652
Description: New. New, unread, unused & in perfect condition with no damaged or missing pages. Collectible pre-release book with plain cover. Great Copy. Ships Lightning Fast. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Vintage
Date Published: 2006
ISBN-13:9781400078653ISBN:1400078652
Description: New. Brand New! Buy with confidence-your satisfaction is guaranteed at B-Logistics! Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. Please note that Expedited shipping is not available at this time. read more
Edition: Reprint
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Vintage, New York
Date Published: 2006
ISBN-13:9781400078653ISBN:1400078652
Description: As New. 8vo-7¾"-9¾" tall, Trade paperback. 466 pages. Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2006, first for aTurkish writer. read more
Edition: First Edition Thus; First Printing
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Vintage Books, New York
Date Published: 2006
ISBN-13:9781400078653ISBN:1400078652
Description: Fine. 9781400078653. Very small/tiny rubs at corners and a few edges, else fine.; A terrific, tight, unread Review Copy w/publicity material included. Paperback Original.; #AA508. read more
Edition: REV ED
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: FABER AND FABER Country = UNITED KINGDOM
Date Published: 2006
ISBN-13:9780571225255ISBN:057122525X
Description: BRAND NEW PAPERBACK. 416 pages. (416 pages) tells the story of galip, an istanbul lawyer whose wife has vanished. playing the part of private investigator, he soon finds himself descending deeper and deeper into an extraordinary mystery. edition rev ed (Paperback) read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN-13:9780374113940ISBN:0374113947
Description: Very Good. 0374113947 Overall good condition with clean text and good binding unless otherwise noted. Most items ship within 24 hours. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Faber and Faber
Date Published: 2002
ISBN-13:9780571178018ISBN:0571178014
Description: 0571178014. Earlier 1996 Faber Paperback. Same isbn, different cover-this is the black one. Pages good, cover has light wear, bumped corner. Will be sent from Devon within 24 hours by first class post.; 1.18 x 7.56 x 4.96 Inches; 400 pages. read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Vintage Books, New York City, NY
Date Published: 2006
ISBN-13:9781400078653ISBN:1400078652
Description: Softcover. First Edition. First Printing. 466 pages. Fine. The author's second novel to be translated into English, in a completely new translation. One of the greatest novels of the last decade of the 20th century. Uncorrected Proof. The first appearance of the new translation in English. Precedes and should not be confused with the Vintage softcover trade edition. Pictorial softcovers with titles on the cover and spine, as issued. Text by Orhan Pamuk. Without DJ, as issued. Presents a new ... read more
"I wanted to invite Pamuk into my club of favorite authors, but he's still in the waiting room. He lost me about halfway through this one. Main character Galip goes searching for his disappeared wife Ruya. But he doesn't really bother to look in any of the likely places, and he tells everyone in the family she's ill at home. He gives no reason for this behavior. Journalist Celal, a relative, is apparently missing, too. Presumably he and Ruya are together, but we suspect this long before Galip does, and then he doesn't bother for what seems a long time to find out. Oh, and Galip could be posing as Celal, and it's often unclear who is the first-person narrator of each chapter--Celal or Galip posing as Celal? Galip's wanderings and musings, as well as Celal's metaphorical stories, became so disconnected that I had to reread the cover blurb to make sure this wasn't a collection of short stories. Maybe, even though I delighted in my travels to Istanbul, I can't get the Turkish mindset? Translator Maureen Freely says the language is complicated: "...Nouns in even the simplest sentences can carry five or six suffixes. ('Apparently, they were inside their houses' is a single word.)" (Zoiks!) The prose is often beautiful but strikes me often as irrelevant or pointless, especially when the book's plot has been set up as something of a mystery."
"This book contained beautiful prose and I enjoyed the wonderful, multifaceted snapshot of Istanbul that was depicted. However my favorable impressions waned after the first third to half of the book and ultimately the positive aspects of the book were eclipsed by what was first a positive characteristic: the prose. That is, I quickly grew tired of endless filigree of this or that -none of which helped develop the plot per se. Was there a plot? I actually had to check another source to be sure. So while Snow was good, this book was too much for me. Basically I skimmed the whole second half which is tantamount to saying that I was not able to complete this book."
"This is the best Pamuk novel I've read, and it is the one that made his reputation in Turkey. It was not as widely-known to English-language readers as two of his subsequent novels ("My Name Is Red" and "Snow") because of a more difficult translation published in 1995. This newer translation is by Pamuk's close English-language collaborator Maureen Freely, and was published in 2006 shortly before Pamuk won the Nobel Prize.
The setting is Istanbul shortly before the military coup of 1980, though the political situation is a mere backdrop for an intensely personal story. (In fact, if you're looking for any political thrills, you're not going to get it, since as in "Snow" Pamuk's characters are disaffected and discouraged ex-leftists at best.) There are layers of hypnotic stories about Istanbul here that are best read directly rather than described."
"This book should have been better. It had a very good beginning but then really fell off.
The fault is most likely both Pamuk's and Freely's (the translator). The way Freely described the translation process in the Afterword (which should have been the Foreword, unlike most Forewords, which give away the entire plot and should be Afterwords), it seems as if Turkish is incredibly hard to translate into English. She also relates how beautiful Pamuk's prose is. That beauty does not come through. Instead, his writing seems overly verbose and his ideas, pseudo-significant. I wonder how much I would have enjoyed the novel if the translation were better (unfortunately, this is apparently a new translation, "improving" on a translation from the 90's!)
You get the feeling that Pamuk is a graphomaniac-he seems much more interested in writing itself than in writing about anything. This is a common disease amongst contemporary writers-all smart, no heart. It doesn't help that the genre is "deconstructionist detective fiction" from the 1980's. It's not as bad as "City of Ass" by Mr. I'm P. Auster, but the ending is almost as unsatisfying. It's also completely ironic that a novel about the life-affirming nature of story-telling can lack all of those pieces that make a story worth reading. For instance, I never cared about any of the characters. They never seemed to act like human beings; their motivations and reactions just seemed false, the product of a writer who writes characters just so they can talk about writing and the theme of "identity." It's almost doubly offensive because Pamuk puts the characters in situations which are highly emotional-in other words, he's letting the situations alone force you, unnaturally, to feel things, rather than allowing characters that we care about to go through these dramatic situations and organically create emotions within the reader.
I think I would have been more forgiving of the book if it hadn't been so long. The middle is so boring and repetitive that I most likely would not have finished the novel if I hadn't been stuck in a room with nothing to do except read the one book I had brought with me. I literally believe you could skip the first 3/4 of part two and actually lose nothing (well, the chapter entitled "The Executioner and the Weeping Face" is worth reading). I also think that Maureen Freely could have cut every one of Pamuk's sentences in half. The sentences just start avalanching you with useless detail. I don't think I've ever read so much useless detail. Pynchon, for example, might throw a lot of strange details at you, but they're not useless-they're funny. Pamuk, or at least Pamuk in English, has no sense of humor whatsoever.
However, it's not as if the book is totally without merit. Again, I liked the beginning of the book a lot! It had a great set up and you really thought he was going to take you somewhere special (the car ran out of gas). The conceit of chapters that alternated between the plot that the characters are living and the columns that the characters within the plot are reading was novel and refreshing; the stories within these columns were some of the best parts of the book. And if you've been to Istanbul, it's fun to see all the different parts of the city pop up in various places. Yet this wasn't enough.
To sum up: this book is not the reason he won the Nobel Prize. Or at least, I hope not!"
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