Rating: 
Summary: The ideal story?
Review: "A few days later, he asked if it were possible to make up a story that had no moral or meaning other than the pleasure of reading or istening to it. `Like music?' I suggested, and Hoja looked surprised. We discussed how the ideal story should begin innocently like a fairy tale, be frightening like a nightmare in the middle, and conclude sadly like a love story ending in separation."So writes the nameless narrator of Pamuk's strange and wonderful novel The White Castle. This tale - ostensibly itself written by Pamuk's narrator and "discovered" by a charactor from another of Pamuk's novels - indeed begins as an innocent (if somewhat fantastic) fairytale, racing along with a "lightness" comparable to Calvino's Baron in the Trees. It takes a turn for the darker and stranger in the middle, as if it were a nightmare written and directed by Poe, to play upon the personal terrors of Borges. And it concludes sadly, even tenderly, as might one of Kundera's later efforts. But few would venture to say that this a tale with "no moral or meaning other than the pleasure of reading"; its ambiguity derives not from the absence of meaning but rather from the overabundence thereof. Pamuk has crafted a tale that sends the mind racing - one moment on the currents of exotic fantasy, the next on deep philosophical problems: self and other, understanding, solipsism, identity. While portions of the book are not light reading, The White Castle is certainly worth the effort.
Rating: 
Summary: IF YOU DID NOT READ A NOVEL BEFORE...
Review: ...this is a book for you! But at the mean time this (or any other novels of Mr Pamuk) should be the last book you read rest of your life. How can somebody say "great" or "wonderful" for these novels, if he or she read before all the books of world authors like John Fowles, Peter Ackroyd, I.Calvino, P.Dostoyevski,....? I've really doubts about a person who read Mr.Pamuks and say "I can finished and liked it", this person never ever read a book in his/her life. Come on, literature is a serious culture sea of mankind and civilization and also life is too short to read the real "first-hand-original-books". Spend your reading time for them please. (Read some novels of Yashar Kemal and Aziz Nesin if you want to read Turkish authors.)
Rating: 
Summary: Büyülü bir kitap.
Review: Kendinizi gencecik bir Osmanlý padiþahý veya herhangi bir Osmanlý sanacak, zayýf bir karakteriniz varsa yaklaþýk bir hafta öyle gezeceksiniz.
Eðer Ýstanbul'da yaþýyorsanýz bu süre uzar gider...
Rating:
Summary: This is for one of the reviews
Review: Dear Orhan:
After countless wasted hours at bookstores flirting with other authors, I discover you, a "new" author I can enthuse about grandly, knowing that with time you will receive the Nobel Prize for literature, while I boast about having read everything of you have written.
You remind me of Milan Kundera and Umberto Eco. There is also the uniquely rich, varied texture of Instanbul inferred in this particular novel, but none the less quite present for me.
(Perhaps i should say that "My Name is Red" is a joyous frolic, a magnum opus, a great success and a good place for your newer readers to start, if they need background in 16th century Istanbul.)
Still I hope no one who reads "Red" misses "White Castle." I found it a serious yet gently amusing exercise in thinking about identity.
There are some telling moments where the two look-a-likes, as slave (captive Italian) and Hoja (Turkish Master) try to tease out their individual nuances and idiosyncracities.
The result is subtle and astonishing. For me, the breathtaking moment is the contrast of the Slaves's anxiety in the face of a mounting plaque and Hoja's fearlessness, when faced with the same. This is literature for romantic thinkers.
White Castle is a brilliant play on identity. Anyone who has spent a few introspective moments post 9/11, et al, should read this contrast and synthesis in western-eastern idea.
So please dear Orhan, although it may be a long road to the Nobel, it is I who have everything to gain, rich hours spent over dark coffee, your books clasped firmly in hand because I cannot deny myself the pleasure of reading them. Sometimes to the detriment of all my other obligations.
Rating:
Summary: Dear Orhan,
Review: Dear Orhan: After countless wasted hours at bookstores flirting with other authors, I discover you, a "new" author I can enthuse about grandly, knowing that with time you will receive the Nobel Prize for literature, while I boast about having read everything of you have written. You remind me of Milan Kundera and Umberto Eco. There is also the uniquely rich, varied texture of Instanbul inferred in this particular novel, but none the less quite present for me. (Perhaps i should say that "My Name is Red" is a joyous frolic, a magnum opus, a great success and a good place for your newer readers to start, if they need background in 16th century Istanbul.) Still I hope no one who reads "Red" misses "White Castle." I found it a serious yet gently amusing exercise in thinking about identity. There are some telling moments where the two look-a-likes, as slave (captive Italian) and Hoja (Turkish Master) try to tease out their individual nuances and idiosyncracites. The result is subtle and astonishing. For me, the breathtaking moment is the contrast of the Slaves's anxiety in the face of the plaque and Hoja'a fearlessness. This is literature for romantic thinkers. White Castle is a brilliant play on identity. Anyone who has spent a few introspective moments post 9/11, et al, should read this contrast and synthesis in western-eastern idea. So please dear Orhan, although it may be a long road to the Nobel, it is I who have everything to gain, rich hours spent over dark coffee, your books clasped firmly in hand because I cannot deny myself the pleasure of reading them. Sometimes to the detriment of all my other obligations.
Rating:
Summary: Powerful, Hypnotic, Richly Imagined
Review: I first became aware of Orhan Pamuk in May, 1997, when The New York Times Magazine published a fascinating and flattering profile of Pamuk under the title "The Best Seller of Byzantium." Eighteen months later, in December, 1998, Pamuk again made the New York Times headlines when he turned down the coveted title of "State Artist" awarded to him by Turkey's President, stating that if he accepted the award he "could not look in the face of people I care about." Pamuk, educated in the West and clearly bearing the influences not only of the classical literature of the West, but also of the fanciful writings of Borges and Calvino (to whom he is often compared) and of his own Turkey, is a writer who-much like his native country-is caught in the often intractable middle: between East and West, betweem Christianity and Islam, betweem modernity and tradition, between an open society and despotism. It is this position which ultimately defines Pamuk's writing, and "The White Castle", a novel originally published in Turkey nearly twenty years ago and translated into English in the past decade, represents a kind of "locus classicus" of the Pamukian literary project. "The White Castle" is a story contained in a manuscript found by Faruk Darvinoglu in 1982 in a long forgotten archive of the Turkish governor's office in Gebze. The manuscript, written in the first person, narrates the tale of a young, educated Venetian who is sailing from Venice to Naples in the seventeenth century. His ship is attacked and captured by Turkish ships and the young Italian is carried off to Istanbul, where he becomes the slave of a man named Hoja. Hoja, an advisor to sultans and pashas, is physically identical to the young Italian. Hoja, too, is highly educated-at least by the standards of his time and place-and he seeks to learn from the Italian everything the Italian knows about the literature, science, technology, and art of the West. Over the course of time, the Venetian and Hoja become indistinguishable, not only in their appearance, but in their thoughts and actions. They collaborate on a number of projects together for the Turkish sultan, the last being the development of a war machine for use in an ill-fated war against the Poles and their Western allies. Using the machine to lay siege to the white castle of the book's title, the the two men ultimately recognize, in the shadow of that castle, that all that they had "experienced for years as coincidence had been inevitable." It is then, in the face of certain failure, that they appear to exchange identities-Hoja fleeing to Italy and assuming the identity of his slave and the slave, in turn, assuming the identity and place of his former master. Or do they? In the enigmatic and occluded narration of "The White Castle", the reader is left as uncertain of the identities of the two men as the Italian and the Turk are of their own confused identities. "The White Castle" is a powerful, hypnotic, richly imagined book which plays on the notions of identity and cultural difference, on the meeting of East and West, on the sometimes seemingly indeterminate place of Turkey in the geography of the world-and of the mind. It is, in other words, a book worth reading by an author who deservedly merits all the recognition he has gotten in his native Turkey, as well as in the West.
Rating:
Summary: Powerful, Hypnotic, Richly Imagined
Review: I first became aware of Orhan Pamuk in May, 1997, when The New York Times Magazine published a fascinating and flattering profile of Pamuk under the title "The Best Seller of Byzantium." Eighteen months later, in December, 1998, Pamuk again made the New York Times headlines when he turned down the coveted title of "State Artist" awarded to him by Turkey's President, stating that if he accepted the award he "could not look in the face of people I care about." Pamuk, educated in the West and clearly bearing the influences not only of the classical literature of the West, but also of the fanciful writings of Borges and Calvino (to whom he is often compared) and of his own Turkey, is a writer who-much like his native country-is caught in the often intractable middle: between East and West, betweem Christianity and Islam, betweem modernity and tradition, between an open society and despotism. It is this position which ultimately defines Pamuk's writing, and "The White Castle", a novel originally published in Turkey nearly twenty years ago and translated into English in the past decade, represents a kind of "locus classicus" of the Pamukian literary project. "The White Castle" is a story contained in a manuscript found by Faruk Darvinoglu in 1982 in a long forgotten archive of the Turkish governor's office in Gebze. The manuscript, written in the first person, narrates the tale of a young, educated Venetian who is sailing from Venice to Naples in the seventeenth century. His ship is attacked and captured by Turkish ships and the young Italian is carried off to Istanbul, where he becomes the slave of a man named Hoja. Hoja, an advisor to sultans and pashas, is physically identical to the young Italian. Hoja, too, is highly educated-at least by the standards of his time and place-and he seeks to learn from the Italian everything the Italian knows about the literature, science, technology, and art of the West. Over the course of time, the Venetian and Hoja become indistinguishable, not only in their appearance, but in their thoughts and actions. They collaborate on a number of projects together for the Turkish sultan, the last being the development of a war machine for use in an ill-fated war against the Poles and their Western allies. Using the machine to lay siege to the white castle of the book's title, the the two men ultimately recognize, in the shadow of that castle, that all that they had "experienced for years as coincidence had been inevitable." It is then, in the face of certain failure, that they appear to exchange identities-Hoja fleeing to Italy and assuming the identity of his slave and the slave, in turn, assuming the identity and place of his former master. Or do they? In the enigmatic and occluded narration of "The White Castle", the reader is left as uncertain of the identities of the two men as the Italian and the Turk are of their own confused identities. "The White Castle" is a powerful, hypnotic, richly imagined book which plays on the notions of identity and cultural difference, on the meeting of East and West, on the sometimes seemingly indeterminate place of Turkey in the geography of the world-and of the mind. It is, in other words, a book worth reading by an author who deservedly merits all the recognition he has gotten in his native Turkey, as well as in the West.
Rating: 
Summary: Booooring
Review: I gave this book a big chance, but I thought it was boring and never really got to the point. It could have dealt with interesting themes about identity and science, but I don't think it did them justice.
Rating:
Summary: This is for one of the reviews
Review: I have already reviewed this wonderful book -- now I have a question. Twice I have read really great reviews by S. Bentler. I want to know if this person is an author. The writing is so lovely, I would read this person's books. I don't know where else to address this question but here, in hopes that he/she may notice at some point, and answer the question. Thanks
Rating:
Summary: absolutely superb
Review: I have wanted to read something by this author for some time. He came recommended as a truly unique voice, with the additional interest of being a Turk steeped in the mores and traditions of his country and yet able to view them with some satirical distance. SO I was very happy to discover this volume and was not disappointed. It is a first-rate historical novel set in the Ottoman Empire during the beginning of the Enlightenment in Europe. Without giving away any secrets, the plot follows a young Venetian university graduate who is enslaved and given to a Turkish savant, who wishes to learn from him as much as he can. From the most horrible humiliations and labor, the young Venetian rises to the top of Ottoman society, all the time battling to maintain an identity independent from his owner. The historical details are fascinating and often very funny. The reader witnesses the limits of proto-science in a more of less Medieval Islamic culture, which is viewed as half magic but also as full of potential power. Then there is the Ottoman court, in which the slave and his owner become key players through guile and some scientific accomplishments, in particular during the plague. The intrigues are full of tension and mystery, a world glimpsed but not wholly explained in a perfect balance of novelistic art. Finally, there is the inter-play between slave and owner, a conflict that is brutal and terrifying and yet a rare treat for the reader. The psychology of this conflict, I found, is extremely profound and realistic, showing the effect that each had on the other as the years passed. It is also full of surprises. Highest recommendation.
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