Review of Istanbul: Memories and the City by Orhan Pamuk

*Istanbul* by Orhan Pamuk (2003). Published by Vintage International.

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m coming across in the world.

I recently fell into a spell of unemployment probably during the worst time to be unemployed, as it was very hard to find a job. I was applying to hundreds of jobs, getting interviews, but no offer was manifesting for me in the near future. So during this time, I had a lot of free time, and spent a good chunk of it chipping away at the blog.

Today’s book review comes from a book that I never expected to read so soon. I had actually never read any of Orhan Pamuk’s work before this moment, but I knew quite a bit about his writing and the acclaim he brought to Turkish literature in the world. I’m a master procrastinator when it comes to the kinds of books I’m reading,

However, my time to read Pamuk came much earlier than expected, as I wrote in the previous paragraph. For the first time, my family decided to book a trip abroad, and it was to Istanbul. My father never gets to pick our vacations, as he doesn’t pay for them, and my sister felt bad because he’s never really wanted to go anywhere.

So technically we picked Istanbul for him, but figured it was something he would like because it’s similar to his home country. I was really excited about this trip, even though I was bummed out about being unemployed at this point, having put in hundreds of job applications, and so I purchased a used copy of Istanbul to read about the city from Pamuk’s perspective.

I flew through this book in the middle of a trip. Let’s get into the review before I start rambling too much—I know introductions can get a bit lengthy!

Orhan Pamuk’s memories and stories about living in the city of Istanbul.

This is a nonfiction place very much rooted in the place it’s set in. That’s in the synopsis of the book, as this is a book where Istanbul is technically the main character. Every single story is about Istanbul and its hardships, how this is a town full of people that Pamuk knows and loves, but it’s still full of strangers and mystery.

Although each chapter is going through a story, Orhan introduces us to the life he’s lived throughout the streets of Istanbul. His story is a short ones compared to the life of this magical city, but for now we see how he’s living in the same apartment where he was born and raised in, continuing on the family lineage.

Like many other books, we begin with childhood. His parents didn’t have the happiest of marriages, and Pamuk knew this pretty early on. The book doesn’t entirely take place within his childhood, but as he grows older and wiser, he begins realizing that Istanbul is a place full of melancholy.

It’s not just within his own family; it’s the history of the city as well. No matter the tragedies he witnesses in his own life, there’s a city that continue to exist and watch over so many different forms of tragedies. Historical, political, social—this is a place that has seen it all.

At the same time, the city is changing. This book was published in 2003 in Turkish, which makes me wonder about what it might look like if it were published today in 2025. Turkey has completely changed since then, and I’ve read quite a few anecdotes about how Istanbul especially feels like a different city than it was ten years ago.

In this book, Pamuk is actively weaving in the notion of history within a memoir, creating something that can read pretty densely if you’re trying to finish it within a time limit. I don’t usually recommend doing that, even to fit in Goodreads challenges, as you really cheapen your reading experience if you don’t go at a speed that works for you to fully absorb the mterial.

I was trying to take my time with this book, so I didn’t have a difficult time with the writing. However, this is fairly dense at times and the structure of the sentences itself makes it seem like there’s a lot going on at once, which tends to happen when you add in history and more academic-adjacent writing.

Overall Thoughts

As someone who wanted to read this book to get an intimate glimpse at Istanbul ahead of my trip, I was happy with the book overall and will be keeping my copy in my personal collection.

I do believe even if I wasn’t going to Istanbul, I would have enjoyed this a lot, as it manages to be a really poignant picture of a changing city at specific moments in one man’s life. I knew nothing about Pamuk before this, but now I want to read more and learn about his life.

I don’t think this is for everyone though! If you have no interest in Istanbul or how a city impacts and shapes one’s life, I think this might not be the book for you. The writing itself is very good though—it’s hard to pull of this kind of memoir/history book in the way that Pamuk did.

I say that if you’re interested in the book though definitely pick it up. Or even if you’re heading to Istanbul soon like I am, this might be a great read on the flight there. I kind of wish I saved it for the flight, but that would’ve meant less room in my luggage to buy another book!

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