It might be impossible to separate Orhan Pamuk (Silent House) from his home of Istanbul. His autobiography was even named after it. But while his previous work explored the educated class and a melancholy particular to the city, the sprawling A Strangeness in My Mind takes a different tack. This 580-page novel (with an appendix annotating where characters appeared, à la Proust) is the longest Pamuk has ever written, and it might be the most energetic, too.
A Strangeness in My Mind follows Mevlut, who moves to Istanbul with his father to sell yogurt and boza, a traditional Turkish drink, as part of a wave of immigration into the city during the Cold War. Pamuk uses Mevlut's transition--from adolescent to married man to grandfather--as a way to tease out the massive changes Istanbul underwent from the late '60s to the early 21st century. By examining specifics in the life of a poor street vendor trying to make it into the middle class, he's able to explore the rapid technological advances made (sometimes forced) on the city's inhabitants, and show how decisions made by the elite affect the everyman.
But there's no villain in A Strangeness in My Mind. Instead, the ever-powerful force of progress is what pushes Mevlut forward and challenges his career as a boza seller. Disputes over politics and ethnicity run through the book, but Pamuk is content simply to show those differences, to give voice to every viewpoint in his hometown. By doing this, he creates an immersive experience of a tumultuous city, ever-changing, ever-moving. --Noah Cruickshank, marketing manager, Open Books, Chicago, Ill.