Memories of Distant Mountains: Illustrated Notebooks, 2009-2022

by Orhan Pamuk, Ekin Oklap (Translator)

Overview

The journals of the Nobel Prize–winning author, beautifully illustrated with his own paintings

For many years, Orhan Pamuk kept a record of his daily thoughts and observations, entering them in small notebooks and illustrating them with his own paintings. This book combines those notebooks into one volume. He writes about his travels around the world, his family, his writing process, and his complex relationship with his home country of Turkey. He charts the seeds of his novels and the things that inspired his characters and the plots of his stories. Intertwined in his writings are the vibrant paintings of the landscapes that surround and inspire him.

A beautiful object in its own right, in Memories of Distant Mountains readers can explore Pamuk's intoxicating inner world and can have a fascinating, intimate encounter with the art, culture, and charged political currents that have shaped one of literature’s most important voices.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780593801253
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	11/26/2024
Sold by:	Random House
Format:	eBook
Pages:	384

About the Author

ORHAN PAMUK won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2006. His novel My Name Is Red won the 2003 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. His work has been translated into more than sixty languages. He lives in Istanbul. Translated by Ekin Oklap.

Editorial Reviews

09/16/2024

Nobel Prize winner Pamuk (Nights of Plague) explores politics, his creative process, and the wonders of the natural world in this dazzling illustrated diary. Pamuk selects from 14 years of journal entries, which cover a period when he wrote several novels, taught at Columbia University, and established Istanbul’s Museum of Innocence, a collection of everyday objects—from cigarettes to a 1956 Chevy—suggested by his novel of the same name. Other subjects include soccer, dark nights of the soul (“The emptiness of life. A deep-seated dread. It’s as if I were in space”), and the persecution he’s endured from Turkish officials for publicly discussing the Armenian genocide. His paintings are bright and guileless; most of them depict ships plying the waters near Istanbul or looming mountains rendered in a ghostly style reminiscent of Chinese landscape painting. Pamuk’s musings captivate, whether he’s registering the sublime (“The idea of disappearing behind the farthest of all mountains is a fantasy of reunion with our ancestors”) or poeticizing the mundane (“The sound of waves lapping gently at the shore and the engine of a ship. Folk songs on a radio that’s been left on”). It’s a rewarding peek inside the mind of a master storyteller. Photos. Agent: Sarah Chalfant, Wylie Agency. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

"Pictures of a writer’s days. . . . An intimate volume revealing glimpses of his life and work. . . . Although he gave up artwork in favor of writing, he still finds pleasure in combining both, as did William Blake. . . . Some illustrations, glowing with pinks, greens, and yellows, evoke Matisse. In slashes of black and grey, Pamuk captures the dark mysteries of seascapes; in other drawings, he tries to convey the quality of his dreams. . . . A lyrical illuminated memoir." —Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

2024-07-17
Pictures of a writer’s days.

From the many notebooks in which Nobel Prize–winner Pamuk wrote and drew from 2009 to 2022, he has assembled an intimate volume revealing glimpses of his life and work. Because he puts pages into “emotional” rather than chronological order—emotions that range from melancholy to exhilaration—readers may find it helpful to consult the appended chronology, which contains details of Pamuk’s worldwide travels, teaching, lecturing, and publications. Between the ages of 7 and 22, he recalls, he thought he was going to be a painter, influenced by pointillists like Seurat. Although he gave up artwork in favor of writing, he still finds pleasure in combining both, as did William Blake. In waiting rooms, on trains, in cafes and restaurants, Pamuk makes sketches, sometimes painting them with watercolors when he returns home. “The loveliness of this landscape,” he notes of one, “is a call to respect the world and the whole universe.” Some illustrations, glowing with pinks, greens, and yellows, evoke Matisse. In slashes of black and grey, Pamuk captures the dark mysteries of seascapes; in other drawings, he tries to convey the quality of his dreams. “The only way to transpose the mood of a dream onto paper,” he writes, “is to paint it in watercolor.” Throughout, Pamuk reflects on the challenge of constructing his Museum of Innocence, an exhibition space that he conceived as a companion to his novel of the same name. “Sometimes,” he writes in 2009, “I think of this notebook as a museum,” a repository of memories. “When I draw in my journals,” he writes, “the poetry of the world seeps into my day-to-day life.” In 2019 he adds, “To live is to see.”

A lyrical illuminated memoir.

Kirkus Reviews