Synopsis
Galip is a lawyer in Istanbul. When his wife Rüya disappears, along with her half-brother Jelal (a journalist with a murky political past), Galip makes a desperate attempt to trace her. Alongside the action-filled narrative of Galip's story are Jelal's newspaper columns which provide the book with ideas about self, identity, and illusion.
Galip is a lawyer living in Istanbul. His wife, the detective-novel-loving Rèuya, has disappeared. Could she have left him for her ex-husband, Celãal, a popular newspaper columnist? But Celãal, too, seems to have vanished. As Galip investigates, he finds himself assuming the enviable Celãal's identity, wearing his clothes, answering his phone calls, even writing his columns. Galip pursues every conceivable clue, but the nature of the mystery keeps changing, and when he receives a death threat, he begins to fear the worst. With its cascade of beguiling stories about Istanbul, The Black Book is a brilliantly unconventional mystery, and a provocative meditation on identity. For Turkish literary readers it is the cherished cult novel in which Orhan Pamuk found his original voice, but it has largely been neglected by English-language readers. Now, in Maureen Freely's beautiful new translation, they, too, may encounter all its riches.--Publisher description.
| Details | | Publication Date: | 2006-07-11 | | Series: | Vintage International Series |
| Size | | Length: | 416 pages | | Height: | 8.0 in | | Width: | 5.0 in | | Thickness: | 1.0 in | | Weight: | 12.8 oz |
Industry Reviews
"[THE BLACK BOOK is] a love song to Istanbul and a subtle allegory of deconstruction, but, above all, it is a celebration of storytelling, an art increasingly rare in a world of gossip and faddism. THE BLACK BOOK is a deliciously infuriating, haunting and richly imaginative shaggy dog story and a maze of touching, humorous tales."
(08/06/2008)
"'Black Book' is a tour de force of irreverent ideas, labyrinthine plot and bold and playful innovations, rendered into supple and suave English by translator Guneli Gun, herself an accomplished Turkish-American novelist."
San Francisco Chronicle Book Review - Abbas Milani (05/21/1995)
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