Hi everyone,
I haven't been writing on BookTuesday for quite sometimes! Does it means I have been a lazy reader lately? 
Anyway, yesterday I finished reading a book by Orhan Pamuk "Istanbul - Memories of A City" that I bought while at Manchester Airport last September.
I heard about the author from an Estonian friend of mine who is in the publishing industry. Orhan Pamuk's books have been translated into more than 20 languages, and typically deal with clashes between civilisations and Islam's relationship with secular nationalism. He has won the 2006 Nobel Prize for literature, has earned international acclaim for his writing while also generating controversy in his native Turkey. His best known works are the novels Snow and My Name Is Red. (which are now in my list of books to read)
Reading this memoir giving me the 'urge' to visit Istanbul and to 'walk through the book' ..... Turkey, a product of Ottoman Empire and Ataturk's revolution ..... has always been a'mystery' to me .
" Pamuk's achievement in ''Istanbul'' is to show the human damage done by Ataturk's revolution without succumbing to the benighted nostalgia of many Turkish Islamists. He is appalled that many secular Turks (including, presumably, Pamuk himself) must ''grapple with the most basic questions of existence -- love, compassion, religion, the meaning of life, jealousy, hatred -- in trembling confusion and painful solitude'' but he offers no solution. "
(Christopher De Bellaigue - THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, 12.6.2005)
Happy Thursday! "Reading to the mind what excercise is to the body."
Love - Larra
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