"Magnificent . . . a robust, affectionate chronicle . . . The book spills over with detail . . . [and] each of its sections . . . has the amplitude of most single novels . . . With the lightest of touches, [Pamuk] crosses his characters' everyday routines against large-scale social and political disturbances . . . [Readers] won't forget Mevlut or Mr. Pamuk's Istanbul. Both seem too vital to exist only in the pages of a book."
--Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal "A complex psychological drama . . . [and] a tremendous concatenation of voices and places and politics and culture, gathered around a melancholy hero . . . [written with] virtuosic craft, intellectual richness, emotional subtlety and a feeling of freedom that comes from a narrative that finds its most meaningful moments in the side streets of storytelling . . . [
A Strangeness in My Mind] wrestles with the complexity of an ever-changing city . . . Most delightful are first-person monologues by the characters themselves . . . It's very funny, while also allowing into Mevlut's tale the colorful voices and contending perspectives of the world around him . . . For Pamuk the vision of life as a complex web of knowable things provides a terrifically interesting way to write a book."
--Martin Riker, The New York Times Book Review
"One of Pamuk's most enjoyable novels and an ideal place to begin for readers who want to get to know him . . . Pamuk does for Istanbul something like what James Joyce did for Dublin . . . He captures not just the look and feel of the city, but its culture, its beliefs and traditions, its people and their values . . . A love letter to modern Turkey."
--Adam Kirsch, The Washington Post "Pamuk's boundless compassion . . . makes the life of a struggling street vendor become, on the page, as monumental and as worthy of our attention as a sultan's . . . [His] impulse to ennoble the most humble among us is perhaps the best reason to read Pamuk's work . . . Since becoming Turkey's first Nobel laureate for literature in 2006, [he] has written complex, ambitious books with the kind of energy one might expect from a young novelist."
--Anthony Marra, San Francisco Chronicle
"A textured and rewarding narrative . . . Some of the most memorable chapters are interior monologues from women who, every day, must negotiate defiance and deferral to their men and their in-laws . . . [Pamuk] chooses multiple perspectives over moral judgment, which allows him to focus on the inner lives of his characters as they shape the city that, in turn, shapes them."
--The Economist
"Filled with . . . rich specificity, creating for readers a world that feels, smells and tastes alive . . . Pamuk is such a skilled writer that he renders the most esoteric, seemingly banal topics fascinating . . .
Strangeness is light and funny. Pamuk's perspective is generous. He takes a long view of history . . . a remarkable feat."
--Trine Tsouderos, Chicago Tribune "The women in these pages are fabulous . . . In the midst of the massive sprawl that is Istanbul, at the juncture of West and East, Pamuk uses a bickering crowd of family and friends to tell the story of a factious, ever-changing culture and its many points of discord."
--Laura Collins-Hughes, The Boston Globe "There's no finer novelist living today . . . With
A Strangeness in My Mind the author has made Istanbul into one of the world's great literary cities . . . Reading Pamuk is like sipping a glass of fine wine or reading a late Dickens novel. Writers don't get any better."
--Charles R. Larson, Counterpunch "Beautifully done, suffused with a nostalgic light . . . It is a big book, bristling with paraphernalia: indexes, character lists and epigraphs. But it is also an intimate one, contrasting 40 years of Istanbul's political and demographic upheaval with the quotidian experiences of some of its inhabitants . . . A study of urban modernisation and a lament for a time before the single-mindedness of reformers."
--Jon Day, Financial Times (UK) "Magnificent . . . [a] sprawling story that Pamuk tells, and Ekin Oklap translates, with panache . . . At the same time as posing philosophical questions about the importance of intentions over outcomes, Pamuk celebrates marriage, parenthood and even quarrelsome extended family . . .
[He] is becoming that rare author who writes his best books after winning the Nobel Prize for Literature."
--Max Liu, The Independent (UK) "Above all a love letter to the city in all its faded, messy, dusty glory . . . [
A Strangeness in My Mind is] a vast collection of characters, events, houses, food, objects that, the reader realises at the end of 600 pages, are summed up in the name Istanbul."
--Alberto Manguel, The Guardian (UK) "Warm and gently engrossing . . . the story of modern Istanbul, of how a decaying, mixed, cosmopolitan city has been massively expanded and transformed by poor migrants from Anatolia. It has a political dimension . . . but at its heart, this is a novel about work, love and family."
--Theo Tait, The Sunday Times (UK) "[A] carefully detailed and compassionately told tale of life in Istanbul over the last 60 years . . . Pamuk has added another major work to his oeuvre . . . The novel's central concerns are human nature, communication, and interpersonal relationships, and this great writer explores these themes with a universal warmth, wit, and intelligence."
--James Coan, Library Journal "Mesmerizing . . . A sweeping epic . . . The fable-like story's chief protagonist is the ruminative Mevlut Karatas . . . His walkabouts and skirmishes with his family are engrossing, but what really stands out is Pamuk's treatment of Istanbul's evolution into a noisy, corrupt, and modernized city . . . This is a thoroughly immersive journey through the arteries of Pamuk's culturally rich yet politically volatile and class- and gender-divided homeland."
--Publishers Weekly (starred review, Review of the Day, Pick of the Week) "Rich, complex, and pulsing with urban life: one of this gifted writer's best . . . As Pamuk follows his believably flawed protagonist and a teeming cast of supporting players across five decades, Turkey's turbulent politics provide a thrumming undercurrent of unease . . . Pamuk celebrates the city's vibrant traditional culture--and mourns its passing--in wonderfully atmospheric passages . . . [and] recalls the great Victorian novelists as he ranges confidently from near-documentary passages on real estate machinations and the privatization of electrical service to pensive meditations on the gap between people's public posturing and private beliefs."
--Kirkus (starred review)