Istanbul is a history of the people who lived in and around the city walls. Madden’s narrative is driven by conquests and construction. It is punctuated by earthquakes, fires, and plagues, and shot through with religious fervor and political intrigue. Continue Reading »
We can tell ourselves that the conflict is temporary and superficial, that other civilizations are moving inexorably toward our understanding. But the clash is profound and perduring. Continue Reading »
Snow by Orhan Pamuk Knopf. 426 pp. $26. Two months after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Turkish author Orhan Pamuk published an essay in the New York Review of Books (titled “The Anger of the Damned”) in which Pamuk, who is often mentioned as a contender for the Nobel Prize, tried . . . . Continue Reading »