A Strangeness in My Mind: A novel

Pamuk, Orhan

ISBN 10: 0307700291 / ISBN 13: 9780307700292

Published by U.S.A.: Knopf, 2015

About this Item

First American Edition as stated on copyright page. Signed by author on second front free end paper. Near fine book, minor wear, scratches on top edges and foredge, rubbing on top and bottom edge of spine, crease on top spine, and bump on bottom edge of spine. Fine dust jacket except for creasing on top of spine and sticker on front jacket stating "Signed First Edition".

Seller Inventory # 1603044

Bibliographic Details

• Title: A Strangeness in My Mind: A novel
• Publisher: U.S.A.: Knopf
• Publication Date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0307700291
• ISBN 13: 9780307700292
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition.
• Condition: Near Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Fine
• Signed: Signed by Author(s)

About this title

Synopsis

From the Nobel Prize winner and best-selling author of Snow and My Name Is Red: a soaring, panoramic new novel—his first since The Museum of Innocence—telling the unforgettable tale of an Istanbul street vendor and the love of his life.

Since his boyhood in a poor village in Central Anatolia, Mevlut Karataş has fantasized about what his life would become. Not getting as far in school as he’d hoped, at the age of twelve he comes to Istanbul—“the center of the world”—and is immediately enthralled by both the old city that is disappearing and the new one that is fast being built. He follows his father’s trade, selling boza (a traditional mildly alcoholic Turkish drink) on the street, and hoping to become rich, like other villagers who have settled the desolate hills outside the booming metropolis. But luck never seems to be on Mevlut’s side. As he watches his relations settle down and make their fortunes, he spends three years writing love letters to a girl he saw just once at a wedding, only to elope by mistake with her sister. And though he grows to cherish his wife and the family they have, he stumbles toward middle age in a series of jobs leading nowhere. His sense of missing something leads him sometimes to the politics of his friends and intermittently to the teachings of a charismatic religious guide. But every evening, without fail, Mevlut still wanders the streets of Istanbul, selling boza and wondering at the “strangeness” in his mind, the sensation that makes him feel different from everyone else, until fortune conspires once more to let him understand at last what it is he has always yearned for.

Told from different perspectives by a host of beguiling characters, A Strangeness in My Mind is a modern epic of coming of age in a great city, a brilliant tableau of life among the newcomers who have changed the face of Istanbul over the past fifty years. Here is a mesmerizing story of human longing, sure to take its place among Pamuk’s finest achievements.

About the Author

ORHAN PAMUK won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2006. His novel My Name Is Red won the 2003 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. His work has been translated into more than sixty languages.