The black book - Orhan Pamuk

A New Translation and Afterword by Maureen Freely

Galip is a lawyer living in Istanbul.
His wife, the detective novel-loving Ruya, has disappeared. Could she have left him
for her ex-husband or Cell, a popular newspaper columnist? But Cell, too, seems
to have vanished. As Galip investigates, he finds himself assuming the enviable Cell'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.