About the Orhan Pamuk's Istanbul Walk in Istanbul
“I've never left Istanbul, never left the houses, streets and neighborhoods of my childhood."
For many, Turkish Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk's vision of Istanbul as a society at a crossroads between westernization and tradition, defines this city. It is fitting, therefore, that Pamuk and his works provides a unique lens to understand Istanbul. Focusing on the affluent neighborhood Nisantasi where Pamuk grew up and which figures in many of his novels, this three-hour walking tour takes us deep into Pamuk's magical city and prompts us to ponder the intriguing interplays between fiction, reality, and the Istanbul evoked by this famous author and his enigmatic characters.
We will begin with an overview of Pamuk and his work, tracing his biography and covering key elements of his contributions to world literature, generally, and the idea of Istanbul, more specifically. We'll look directly at how the city itself acts as a character in his novels and how he has reinvented it for modern Turks—
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“I've never left Istanbul, never left the houses, streets and neighborhoods of my childhood."
For many, Turkish Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk's vision of Istanbul as a society at a crossroads between westernization and tradition, defines this city. It is fitting, therefore, that Pamuk and his works provides a unique lens to understand Istanbul. Focusing on the affluent neighborhood Nisantasi where Pamuk grew up and which figures in many of his novels, this three-hour walking tour takes us deep into Pamuk's magical city and prompts us to ponder the intriguing interplays between fiction, reality, and the Istanbul evoked by this famous author and his enigmatic characters.
We will begin with an overview of Pamuk and his work, tracing his biography and covering key elements of his contributions to world literature, generally, and the idea of Istanbul, more specifically. We'll look directly at how the city itself acts as a character in his novels and how he has reinvented it for modern Turks—sometimes controversially.
"Although I've lived in other districts from time to time, fifty years on I find myself back in the Pamuk apartments, where my first photographs were taken, and where my mother first held me in her arms to show me the world,” writes Pamuk in Istanbul, Memories and the City. Much of our walk will take place in the streets of Nisantasi and, using the writer's texts as our guide, to seek out specific sites that play a role in such works as Istanbul, Memories and the City, The Museum of Innocence, and The Black Book. We'll pass by the writer's childhood home, the Pamuk Apartments, and the neighborhood's central mosque, Tesvikiye. We'll also visit the corner where the fictional journalist of The Black Book, Celal Salik was killed and the two-story apartment where the elusive paramour Füsun lived with her father Tarık Bey and her mother Nesibe in The Museum of Innocence.
Our focus will extend beyond the literary and look at the state of intellectualism in Turkey today. We'll consider the role the city plays in international arts and culture and what Pamuk, and the city he invents, mean to writers, artists, and thinkers.
Our discovery will conclude at the newly inaugurated Museum of Innocence, inspired by Pamuk’s eponymous 2008 novel. In the novel, the author describes how his main character, Kemal, collects his lovers belongings and the logic behind how he sets them out in the museum. On display is a collection of antique objects and furniture, bric-a-brac, personal effects and signs that resemble objects found in the novel, embodying both daily life in Istanbul during the second half of the twentieth century and the blurry line between fact and fiction.
