A Strangeness in My Mind Author: Orhan Pamuk-penguin india
Since his boyhood in a poor village in Central Anatolia, Mevlut Karatas
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 both by the city
being demolished and the new one that is fast being built. He follows
his father's trade, selling boza on the street, and hopes to become rich
like other villagers who have settled on the desolate hills outside the
booming metropolis. But chance seems to conspire against him. 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, his relations all make
their fortunes while his own years are spent in a series of jobs leading
nowhere; he is sometimes attracted to the politics of his friends and
intermittently to the lodge of a religious guide. But every evening,
without fail, he 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 the perspectives of many beguiling characters, A Strangeness in My Mind
is a modern epic of coming of age in a great city, and a mesmerizing
narrative sure to take its place among Pamuk's finest achievements.