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.
Rating:
Summary: Incredibly fine writing!
Review: I predict that Pamuk will one day receive the Nobel Prize for literature. This is one of the best books I have read in recent years. The impact of this novel reminds me of my first contact with Kafka back in school. This story is, as others say, a book about east-west contradictions, about the west's ascendancy in terms of science. But it is also a book about obsession and identity; a book about what makes us who we are. I recommend this book without reservation!
Rating:
Summary: Incredibly fine writing!
Review: I predict that Pamuk will one day receive the Nobel Prize for literature. This is one of the best books I have read in recent years. The impact of this novel reminds me of my first contact with Kafka back in school. This story is, as others say, a book about east-west contradictions, about the west's ascendancy in terms of science. But it is also a book about obsession and identity; a book about what makes us who we are. I recommend this book without reservation!
Rating: 
Summary: A Story of an Italian and a Turkish
Review: I started reading the original version (Turkish) of this book while I was in Turkey, but then I stopped in the middle. When I turned back to USA, I saw the English translation, and continued and finished it by reading the English. I can say that the translation is more or less as good and exciting as the original.
The book is nice, and like Pamuk's more popular book, "My Name is Red", it also questions the values of East and West, Ottoman Empire and Venice.
However, I agree that this book is not Pamuk's best. Although I enjoyed reading it a lot, it was simpler than Pamuk's other stories.
It still is a very good and interested book, especially for the people who wants to see how different, or how similar used to be (are) the perspectives and lives of people of the East and West of the Mediterranean.
Rating:
Summary: excellent , remerkable
Review: I think Orhan Pamuk is one of the best Turkish writers in 20th century.As He said in one of his book New Life after I have read his book my life changed.
Rating:
Summary: Hall of Mirrors
Review: I was taken by surprise when I finished the book. For me it was one of the few assigned readings I had ever enjoyed! Whether a student of Middle-Eastern sociopolitical history or of psychology Orhan Pamuk has much to offer to his readers in "The White Castle." In one short piece he has managed to tell the story of the fall of one of the greatest empires in the annals of history. Moreover he tags a personal message into the plot without disturbing the whole portrait painted in the narratives (i.e. Hoja's "weapon" that fails the Turks in the end may signify his own political views on 20th century Turkish society and government). Pamuk's modern style of writing upon an age-old topic of "Western Christendom" vs. the "Islamic World" immediately drew me into the book, momentarily making me forget I had a paper to write afterwards. I had not seen such an original (to me) take of cultural history since Josephine Tey's "The Daughter of Time." Although the scarcity of dialogue may conjure up images of the scholarly treatises by Edward Said the novel does not seem to need it at all. Pamuk perfectly portrays the thoughts, emotions, and struggles of the characters through a first-person narration which he uses throughout the book (his description of the plague was particularly memorable). The issue of identity is a much tougher subject due to its more subjective nature, but it does seem that Pamuk greatly stress the importance of personal accomplishment, appropriate knowledge, and cultural mindset in forming one's character. However, the answer to such a deep question is best left to the individual reader. I hope that many others will pick up this book of their own volition as I probably will not have found it if it wasn't a part of my college course.
Rating:
Summary: What is actually in an endless succession of boxes ?
Review: Looking into a mirror to see who you are and looking into a book to see who somebody else is--two very similar actions but with results that differ. This novel felt like several boxes inside one another; you enter, or maybe fall through one after another, not having comprehended exactly where you were before making the next move. At the end, I understood that I had thought about many themes. It made me imagine fantastic, dream trips across frozen steppes, twisted me around in my mind till I felt like a sick dwarf, and left me wondering who could have written such a strange, powerful novel. And why ? I admired this writer, who I had not read before, because of this power. The story as such is not that found in a usual "novel". It is a Kafkaesque parable, it reminds people of Borges (even on the book jacket), but is not so much like him, calmer and deeper. Pamuk asks who anybody really is and how do you know ? At another level his parable is of relations between the Ottoman Empire and the West, between those who came up with victorious technology and those who attempted to learn it. (p.106) "..we had in hand not a grand plan that would save us from ruin, but only the dream of such a plan." If you want to call this theme "historical fiction" then OK, this is an historical novel, but I would not call it that. What kind of background is needed for scientific discovery ? This question might be a sub-theme, but not the major point. The book is in no way about Islam, unless you want to point a finger at that religion for not inspiring science. Accusations of that sort are a stupid activity if there ever was one. Can one person be another ? Can you change your life for one you'd rather have? These are universal questions and THE WHITE CASTLE is above all a universal novel. Read it. Make your own conclusion. I can't say I understood everything, but it's a hell of an intriguing book.
Rating:
Summary: .A Beautiful Story.Simply a Masterpiece
Review: Once again Pamuk deals with philosophy,east-west relations and ancient Istanbul.On the other hand this book has a much more fluent story then Black Book and New life.Pamuk never diappoints his readers.
Rating:
Summary: ORNATED HISTORY
Review: ORHAN PAMUK IS AGAIN DOING A MARVELLOUS JOB BY SYNTHESIZING THE HISTORICAL AND FICTIONAL ELEMENTS THUS TAKING THE READER INTO AN EXCITING JOURNEY IN THE OTTOMAN ERA IN ISTANBUL. THE INTERACTIONS OF THE SLAVE AND THE OWNER ARE SOMETIMES STRIKINGLY BIZARRE AND SEEMS LIKE THEY REPLACE POSITIONS. PAMUK IS ESPECIALLY GOOD AT POINTING OUT HOW KNOWLEDGE IN THE END OVERCOMES AND DOMINATES. I REALLY LIKE IT. OVERALL A VERY GOOD BOOK. WORTH TO READ. MAKES YOU THINK, QUESTION, IMAGINE...
Rating: 
Summary: not his best work
Review: orhan pamuk is one of my favorite writers and of the few brilliant turkish writers of novels. novel, as he comments once, is a western invention in contrast with poetry. and perhaps only in this century writers from the east are employing this genre in an admirable fashion. nevertheless I have to say, compared with his magnificent works like Black Book, and the New Life, White Castle is rather mediocre. the book definitely has intriguing themes: collusion of cultures, the structure and fragility of identity, ironic exhibition of cultural preconceptions... the book does not display a "native orientalism" but rather makes fun of it and this is easy to miss in the first reading. yet these themes are prominent in all of Pamuk's work and many times they are expressed more dramatically and creatively. for anyone interested in the development of Pamuk's thought and his writing skills, the book is of use. but if you want to see Pamuk at his best read the New life or Black Book.
| 
