Get Inside the Mind of Nobel Prize-Winning Author Orhan Pamuk
A few years ago, Nobel Prize-winning author Orhan Pamuk set out to write a short novel about a Turkish street vendor. What emerged was an epic novel spanning more than 5 decades of history; a portrait of Istanbul, the evolving city as complex as the characters it contains, as bittersweet as Pamuk's own relationship to the place he grew up in.
In A Strangeness In My Mind, Mevlut Karataşm spends three years writing love letters to a girl he saw just once at a wedding, only to elope by mistake with her sister. Just as his father did before him, Mevlut makes a living selling boza, a traditional, mildly alcoholic Turkish drink, and hoping to become rich. But every evening, he wanders the streets of Istanbul, 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.
Event: Orhan Pamuk will be in conversation with Lorraine Adams on 11/19 at 6:30 p.m. at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
