A Novel by Orhan Pamuk, Turkish (Ferit Orhan Pamuk (born 7 June 1952) is a Turkish novelist, screenwriter, academic and recipient of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature.)
Translated by Maureen Freely (Faber & Faber)
On a snowy night in Istanbul, the lawyer Galip climbs the minaret of the great Suleymaniye mosque. As he scans the city of domes and hovels below, gazing across its cracked and frayed expanses of “concrete, stone, tile, wood and Plexiglas”, he feels that “he was looking at the surface of a planet that had yet to find its final shape”. The Black Book maps that unfinished planet in a mood and style of visionary fervour. It contains a detective story crammed with mirrors and labyrinths, a study in memory and mourning, a rhapsodic scavenge through Turkish history and culture, and a tear-stained, ecstatic love letter to Orhan Pamuk’s home town. In a time of political strife and personal unease, not long before the Turkish military coup of 1980, Galip’s wife Rüya – a cousin from the squabbling clan who grew up together in their gossip-ridden warren of apartments – disappears. Has she fled the marital home with their kinsman Celâl? He is the legendary newspaper columnist who for decades has spellbound his readers with tales of the folklore, the myths, the byways and the occult secrets of Istanbul, convinced that only by telling stories could he “come to know the mystery of the city and the mystery of life itself”. Through chilly winter streets, haunted by his own and the city’s past, Galip turns “apprentice detective”. He navigates a “sea of clues” in search not only of the absconding pair but a key that may let him understand “the thick cloak of melancholy sitting over our people”.
Alternating with Galip’s distraught zig-zags from neighbourhood to neighbourhood, enigma to enigma, Pamuk invents Celâl’s own columns. Sumptuously woven out of Ottoman history, urban myth and shared nostalgia, they engage in an almost paranoid pursuit of a mysterious “other realm” hidden within the signs, the faces, the bric-à-brac of urban life. These pieces burrow deep into the collective malaise of an era of disguise and masquerade when “we all tried so hard to become someone else”. In the aftermath of the Ottoman Empire, in thrall to Western modes and models in fashion, books, ideas and politics, Celâl’s – and Pamuk’s – Turkey has lost itself in a maze of facsimiles and simulacra, as found in the eerie mannequin museum that Galip visits. The circuitous hunt for missing persons turns into a search, historical and metaphysical, for “life’s secret meaning” amid the fog of change. A contact who might hold the key to the couple’s fate tells Galip that “To live in an oppressed, defeated country is to be someone else”. Yet fables wrenched from the past, individual or national, can never return these vagabond souls to some pristine condition of authenticity. We may peer into “the garden of memories” but its gates stay stoutly shut. Turkey’s “Eastern” and Islamic heritage becomes as much of a consolatory illusion here as its “Western” and secular present.
Galip’s memory-guided investigations, and Celâl’s literary excursions, conjure an Istanbul of the mind. It feels both cinematically precise and poetically elusive. Page by page, Pamuk reanimates every grimy nook, down to the stairwells of backstreet apartment blocks “that stank of sleep, garlic, mildew, lime, coal and cooking-oil”. Yet these streets, squares, cafés, clubs and flats also become mystery-laden “extensions of a dream”. In this oneiric atmosphere, identities blur and shift. Galip starts to inhabit the life of his quarry. He camps out in Celâl’s hideaway in the old family block, and even files columns in the voice of the absent chronicler. His assumption of this other self embodies the novel’s suggestion that “What made the world mysterious was the second person that each of us hid inside ourselves, the twin with whom we shared our lives”. Beyond the public entanglement of East and West, tradition and modernity, the mystic signs that crowd the frozen streets hint at this universal doubleness. “The carpet store, the pastry shop… the sewing machines, the newspapers” – they all “shimmered with their second meanings” when observed by passers-by who all hid second selves.
In torrents of incident and anecdote, rumour and parable, Sufi mysticism and tabloid sensationalism, Pamuk draws on his “bottomless well of stories” to plumb “the mystery of defeat, misery and ruin”. But The Black Book, paradoxically, explodes with joyous life. Each episode of mourning, melancholy and nostalgia has such buoyancy and brio that the “muddy concrete forest” of the city becomes an icy, sooty fairyland. Among the list of tips for columnists Celâl gathers from his journalistic cronies, number fifty-nine runs: “Never forget that the secret is love. The key word is love.” Galip’s pursuit of Celâl and Rüya will end in sorrow, as we always suspect. But stories of love, that “antidote to solitude”, thread The Black Book together. They range from Galip’s reveries of remembrance, with young Rüya minutely recalled down to the “lone green sock” worn on a cycling trip, to Celâl’s enraptured excavations of the city’s eccentric past and people. Among them, we encounter the veteran journalist “so enamoured” of Proust (rather like Pamuk himself) that he endlessly re-reads In Search of Lost Time. Pamuk’s city of loss and mourning is also a metropolis of desire. It is a place that resounds to “the enchanting harmonies, the barely audible music, of longing itself”.
Translation by Maureen Freely (2006) crafts an utterly persuasive English voice for Pamuk: thrilling, intimate, tender, mysterious – and comic.The Black Book by Orhan Pamuk
Translated by Maureen Freely (Faber & Faber)
On a snowy night in Istanbul, the lawyer Galip climbs the minaret of the great Suleymaniye mosque. As he scans the city of domes and hovels below, gazing across its cracked and frayed expanses of “concrete, stone, tile, wood and Plexiglas”, he feels that “he was looking at the surface of a planet that had yet to find its final shape”. The Black Book maps that unfinished planet in a mood and style of visionary fervour. It contains a detective story crammed with mirrors and labyrinths, a study in memory and mourning, a rhapsodic scavenge through Turkish history and culture, and a tear-stained, ecstatic love letter to Orhan Pamuk’s home town. In a time of political strife and personal unease, not long before the Turkish military coup of 1980, Galip’s wife Rüya – a cousin from the squabbling clan who grew up together in their gossip-ridden warren of apartments – disappears. Has she fled the marital home with their kinsman Celâl? He is the legendary newspaper columnist who for decades has spellbound his readers with tales of the folklore, the myths, the byways and the occult secrets of Istanbul, convinced that only by telling stories could he “come to know the mystery of the city and the mystery of life itself”. Through chilly winter streets, haunted by his own and the city’s past, Galip turns “apprentice detective”. He navigates a “sea of clues” in search not only of the absconding pair but a key that may let him understand “the thick cloak of melancholy sitting over our people”.
Alternating with Galip’s distraught zig-zags from neighbourhood to neighbourhood, enigma to enigma, Pamuk invents Celâl’s own columns. Sumptuously woven out of Ottoman history, urban myth and shared nostalgia, they engage in an almost paranoid pursuit of a mysterious “other realm” hidden within the signs, the faces, the bric-à-brac of urban life. These pieces burrow deep into the collective malaise of an era of disguise and masquerade when “we all tried so hard to become someone else”. In the aftermath of the Ottoman Empire, in thrall to Western modes and models in fashion, books, ideas and politics, Celâl’s – and Pamuk’s – Turkey has lost itself in a maze of facsimiles and simulacra, as found in the eerie mannequin museum that Galip visits. The circuitous hunt for missing persons turns into a search, historical and metaphysical, for “life’s secret meaning” amid the fog of change. A contact who might hold the key to the couple’s fate tells Galip that “To live in an oppressed, defeated country is to be someone else”. Yet fables wrenched from the past, individual or national, can never return these vagabond souls to some pristine condition of authenticity. We may peer into “the garden of memories” but its gates stay stoutly shut. Turkey’s “Eastern” and Islamic heritage becomes as much of a consolatory illusion here as its “Western” and secular present.
Galip’s memory-guided investigations, and Celâl’s literary excursions, conjure an Istanbul of the mind. It feels both cinematically precise and poetically elusive. Page by page, Pamuk reanimates every grimy nook, down to the stairwells of backstreet apartment blocks “that stank of sleep, garlic, mildew, lime, coal and cooking-oil”. Yet these streets, squares, cafés, clubs and flats also become mystery-laden “extensions of a dream”. In this oneiric atmosphere, identities blur and shift. Galip starts to inhabit the life of his quarry. He camps out in Celâl’s hideaway in the old family block, and even files columns in the voice of the absent chronicler. His assumption of this other self embodies the novel’s suggestion that “What made the world mysterious was the second person that each of us hid inside ourselves, the twin with whom we shared our lives”. Beyond the public entanglement of East and West, tradition and modernity, the mystic signs that crowd the frozen streets hint at this universal doubleness. “The carpet store, the pastry shop… the sewing machines, the newspapers” – they all “shimmered with their second meanings” when observed by passers-by who all hid second selves.
In torrents of incident and anecdote, rumour and parable, Sufi mysticism and tabloid sensationalism, Pamuk draws on his “bottomless well of stories” to plumb “the mystery of defeat, misery and ruin”. But The Black Book, paradoxically, explodes with joyous life. Each episode of mourning, melancholy and nostalgia has such buoyancy and brio that the “muddy concrete forest” of the city becomes an icy, sooty fairyland. Among the list of tips for columnists Celâl gathers from his journalistic cronies, number fifty-nine runs: “Never forget that the secret is love. The key word is love.” Galip’s pursuit of Celâl and Rüya will end in sorrow, as we always suspect. But stories of love, that “antidote to solitude”, thread The Black Book together. They range from Galip’s reveries of remembrance, with young Rüya minutely recalled down to the “lone green sock” worn on a cycling trip, to Celâl’s enraptured excavations of the city’s eccentric past and people. Among them, we encounter the veteran journalist “so enamoured” of Proust (rather like Pamuk himself) that he endlessly re-reads In Search of Lost Time. Pamuk’s city of loss and mourning is also a metropolis of desire. It is a place that resounds to “the enchanting harmonies, the barely audible music, of longing itself”.
Translation by Maureen Freely (2006) crafts an utterly persuasive English voice for Pamuk: thrilling, intimate, tender, mysterious – and comic.The Black Book by Orhan Pamuk
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