Other Colors
Essays and a Story
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
Knopf Canada is proud to welcome Orhan Pamuk to the list with an inspiring and engaging collection of essays on literary and personal subjects–his first new book since winning the Nobel Prize.
In the three decades that Pamuk has devoted to writing fiction, he has also produced scores of witty, moving and provocative essays and articles. Here is a thoughtful compilation of a dazzling novelist’s best non-fiction, offering different perspectives on his lifelong obsessions.
Pamuk’s criticism, autobiographical writing and meditations are presented alongside interviews he has given and selections from his private notebooks. He engages the work of other novelists, including Sterne and Dostoyevsky, Salman Rushdie and Patricia Highsmith, and he discusses his own books and writing process. We learn not just how he writes but how he lives as he recounts his successful struggle to quit smoking and describes his relationship with his daughter. Ordinary events–applying for a passport, the death of a relative–inspire extraordinary flights of association as the novelist reflects on everything from the child’s state of being to divergent attitudes towards art in the East and West.
Illustrated with photographs, paintings and the author’s own sketches, Other Colors gives us Orhan Pamuk’s world through a kaleidoscope whose brilliant, shifting themes and moods together become a radiant and meaningful whole.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Though the latest book from Nobel Prize-winning Pamuk (Istanbul, Snow) is a standard late-career essay collection, it makes clear the reasons behind the Turkish author's acclaim. Eschewing flash and flourish, Pamuk's style is plain, simple and persuasive-but therein lies its subtle power, well represented over more than 75 pieces divided into sections like "Living and Worrying" and "Politics, Europe, and Other Problems of Being Oneself." Self-reflection and cultural evolution emerge often as twin themes, as in his consideration of the Thousand and One Nights: "In those days, young Turks like me who considered themselves modern viewed the classics of eastern literature as one might a dark and impenetrable forest." These concerns lead naturally to political considerations, such as his conclusion that "the lies about the war in Iraq and... secret CIA prisons have so damaged the West's credibility in Turkey... it is more and more difficult for people like me to make the case for true western democracy in my part of the world." There's humor as well; in "Giving Up Smoking," a smoking cab driver begs Pamuk's pardon: "He was opening the window. 'No,' I said, 'keep it closed. I've given up smoking.'" Also included are musings on his own books and a short story, "To Look Out the Window." Disarmingly honest, Pamuk refuses to give in to melodrama or stylistic quirks, giving his feeling and frustration crystalline clarity and lasting weight.
