A New Translation and Afterword by Maureen FreelyGalip 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 Celâl, a popular newspaper columnist? But Celâl, too, seems to have vanished. As Galip investigates, he finds himself assuming the enviable Celâl'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.
“A glorious flight of dark, fantastic invention.” —
The Washington Post"A splendid novel, as delicious to our mind's palate as a Turkish delight and as subtle . . . in its design as a Persian rug." — San Francisco Chronicle
"An extraordinary, tantalizing novel." —The Nation
"An inventive and . . . exuberant modern national epic."—Sunday Times (London)
Galip roams Istanbul in search of his missing wife. "An inventive and . . . exuberant modern national epic" ("London Sunday Times"); "one of the world's finest writers" ("New Statesman").
Orhan Pamuk's novel My Name Is Red won the 2003 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. His work has been translated into more than twenty languages. He lives in Istanbul.
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