Estambul

Istanbul is a portrait, at times panoramic and at others intimate and personal, of one of the most fascinating cities in Europe looking at Asia. But it is also an autobiography, that of Orhan Pamuk himself. The story begins with the chapter of his childhood, where Pamuk tells us about his eccentric family and his life in a dusty apartment -"the Pamuk apartments", as he calls them- in the center of the city. The author remembers that it was in those distant days when he became aware that he had lived in a space full of melancholy: a resident of a place in ruins that drags a glorious past and tries to make a place for himself in "modernity". Old and beautiful buildings in ruins, valuable and mutating statues, ghostly villages and secret alleys where, above all, the therapeutic Bosphorus River stands out, which in the memory of the narrator is life, health and happiness. This elegy serves for the author to introduce famous painters, writers and murderers, through whose eyes the narrator describes the city.