The book begins without any introduction. On the first page, a full-color facsimile from Pamuk’s notebook, centered inside a thick margin of white space, shows a coastline glimpsed from the sea in a ...

Orhan Pamuk does narrate the “local” as Kirsch tells us, sure, but he does this by turning the image into an allegory. He diagrams the fluid reality of a society by reducing it to sharp dualities ...