Bali Water Feature

• Bali Water Feature
• Garden Water Features & Outdoor Fountains

Outdoor Fountains:
• Freestanding Fountains
• Tabletop Fountains
• Wall-Mounted Fountains
• Fountain Accessories

Water Gardens & Ponds:
• Pond De-Icers
• Pond Decor Items
• Pond Liners
• - Flexible Liners
• - Liner Patch Kits
• - Seaming Tape
• - Foam Sealant
• Pumps & Circulation
• - Pump Nozzles
• - Water Pumps
• - Pump Tubing
• - Pond Foggers
• Water Garden Kits
• - Container Kits
• - Flexible Kits
• - Preformed Kits
• - Waterfall Kits

Search Fountains:
• Water Fountain
• Outdoor Fountain
• Garden Fountain
• Patio Fountain
• Pool Fountain
• Pond Fountain
• Drinking Fountain
• Mist Fountain
• Misting Fountain
• Solar Fountain
• Bamboo Fountain
• Rock Fountain
• Waterfall Fountain
• Rainbow Fountain
• Floating Fountain
• Designer Fountain
• Fountain Head
• Feng Shui Fountain
• Fountain Lighting
• Fountain Pump

Books:
• Garden Fountain
• Outdoor Fountain
• Garden Pond
• Water Pond

Related Items:
• Indoor Fountains

An alternative to this Istanbul: Memories and the City is Bali Water Features's stone garden fountains & water features. All these products are only available for wholesale garden water feature buyers.

Istanbul: Memories and the City

Today's shopping tips: "Be wise in purchasing ..... find best value one"

---

Manufacturer: Knopf
List Price: $26.95
Our Price: $26.77
You Save: $ 0.18 ( 1% )
(prices subject to change)

Average Customer Ratings:

A portrait, by turns intimate and panoramic, of one of the world’s great cities, by its foremost man of letters, author of the acclaimed novels Snow and My Name Is Red.

Blending reminiscence with history; family photographs with portraits of poets and pashas; art criticism, metaphysical musing, and, now and again, a fanciful tale, Orhan Pamuk invents an ingenious form to evoke his lifelong home, the city that forged his imagination. He begins with his childhood among the eccentric extended Pamuk family in the dusty, carpeted, and hermetically sealed apartment building they shared. In this place came his first intimations of the melancholy awareness that binds all residents of his city together: that of living in the seat of ruined imperial glories, in a country trying to become “modern” at the dizzying crossroads of East and West. This elegiac communal spirit overhangs Pamuk’s reflections as he introduces the writers and painters (among the latter, most particularly the German Antoine-Ignace Melling) through whose eyes he came to see Istanbul. Against a background of shattered monuments, neglected villas, ghostly backstreets, and, above all, the fabled waters of the Bosphorus, he presents the interplay of his budding sense of place with that of his predecessors. And he charts the evolution of a rich, sometimes macabre, imaginative life, which furnished a daydreaming boy refuge from family discord and inner turmoil, and which would continue to serve the famous writer he was to become. It was, and remains, a life fed by the changing microcosm of the apartment building and, even more, the beckoning kaleidoscope beyond its walls.

As much a portrait of the artist as a young man as it is an oneiric Joycean map of the city, Istanbul is a masterful evocation of its subject through the idiosyncrasies of direct experience as much as the power of myth--the dazzling book Pamuk was born to write.


DESCRIPTION:

Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 949.61803092
EAN: 9781400040957
Format: Deckle Edge
ISBN: 1400040957
Label: Knopf
Manufacturer: Knopf
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 400
Publication Date: 2005-06-07
Publisher: Knopf
Release Date: 2005-06-07
Studio: Knopf


SIMILAR ITEMS:

• Istanbul: The Collected Traveler: An Inspired Companion Guide (Vintage Departures Original)
• Snow
• My Name Is Red
• Crescent and Star: Turkey Between Two Worlds
• The Museum of Innocence


CUSTOMER REVIEWS:

Customer Rating:
Summary: A BOOK THAT ENHANCES THE CITY
Comment: If you've ever been to Istanbul, I'm sure you've been to all the major MUSTS: The Bosphorus, The Haghia Sophia, The Blue Mosque, The Basilica Cistern, Bartering at the Bazaars, Topkapi Palace, a Whirling Dervish Ceremony and so on.

I would also add this book to that list.

Almost as fascinating as seeing a new city for the first time, is hearing how a native views their own city. While most foreigners would praise the exotic Istanbul skyline, native Orhan Pamuk dwells on the "huzun" or melancholy that has sunk into every stone in the city. Where a foreigner would be amazed and proud of something like the Haghia Sophia, Orhan Pamuk explains that the native would feel depressed at knowing that it is a symbol of better times gone by.

Weaving back and forth throughout the narrative (like those rugs every Turk tries to sell you) are snippets of autobiography. At the very beginning, when the author mentions "the other Orhan", I was heavily reminded of similar themes by Argentinian author JORGE LUIS BORGES, who often wrote about "the other Borges", as if there were another of him in the world.
The parts about family life were interesting too, such as the descriptions of how some of the people in the apartment kept rooms as "museums".

Scattered throughout the text--which can admittedly be dry at times--are dozens of photos and drawings of Istanbul through the ages. Most of the pictures are from other sources but there are a handful that the author himself took.

Although I have once been to Istanbul, this book succeeds--perhaps unintentionally--in creating a longing for one to return, to view the city through native eyes.

Customer Rating:
Summary: So-so
Comment: Istanbul is a truly fascinating city, and the book covers Pamuk's personal memories of it since childhood, and its transformation from the decadent seat of Ottoman power into one of Europe's most astonishingly beautiful and modern cities. What I regret is Pamuk's writing style which frequently veers off into historical minutiea that is a challenge to plod through, but if one skips those parts, he does shed an interesting light on life in Istanbul prior to the mass exodus of it's Greek inhabitants, and how their departure impoverished Turkey culturally in many ways. The Istanbul he depicts is a grey sombre place, caught in the cold-war struggle between the superpowers, living on a lost glorious past, contrary to what it is today. The inclusion of more personal memories would have added warmth and enhanced the book, which in its present state resembles a long rambling lecture by an old historian.

Customer Rating:
Summary: Istanbul by Orhan Pamuk
Comment: Istanbul, Memories and the City is Pamuk's memoir of sorts, an eclectic story about his childhood, his family, but most of all the beautifully decayed backdrop of his hometown. It is the all-encompassing presence of the city that gives the novel its tone, one that oscillates from cordial to friendly to professorial to deeply sad and contemplative. The biographical sequences are a joy, as Pamuk is refreshingly honest about his family's history as well as his own childhood desires. It felt like everything he felt at the time (and I'm sure still does) is attributable to his dark city, and Pamuk often pivots from memoirist to historian as he selects piecemeal facets of Istanbul citizens, traditions, or even images of geographical cityscapes to accent his own journey as a young person growing up within it. Everything culminates with Pamuk in a feeling of huzun, a particularly Turkish melancholy wrought by centuries of East/West conflict, crumbling architecture, and a distinct sense of Istanbul having past its better days. It is this feeling that gives the book a downbeat but ultimately bittersweet edge.

This book is a delight. Pamuk has never been more accessible; by the end of this you feel like he's a friend. Not to say that this book is void of his usual complexity, but here it is much subtler and is only evident when viewing the book as a whole and noticing the great care put into the structure of the piece, as well as the differing feelings he has about Istanbul. He views Istanbul as a city of "poverty, defeat, and ruin"(p.264) but still can't help walking through the city streets all night, alternately melancholy and in love. It also reads like one man's attempt to purge himself of past wrongs and desires, and to do it through trying to understand the unconscious neuroses he has by virtue of simply living in such a varied and provocative city. Simply put it is a good book, probably a great one, and would be enjoyed by any fan of Pamuk or the stunning Imperial City.

Customer Rating:
Summary: Kudos to the translator, too!
Comment: A lovely book -- which I'd not have been able to enjoy, learn from OR comment on, without benefit of Maureen Freely's incredibly fine translation.

Customer Rating:
Summary: From the Nobel Prize winner.
Comment: Available now in paperback this is a perfect beach book; the gravitas, of course, is its Nobel Prize-winning author.

I suppose in a sense this is a travelogue, but so much more. I think the critics are a bit over the top. Take, "The Observer (London): 'This ... elegy ... will bring the world to his feet.'" Well, I don't know about that.

It is actually quite depressing and "The Sun" says it best: "A deeply inward memoir of a city."

The memoir has elements of Proust and Joyce. Proustian in personal and family remembrances, and Joycean in description of a city. Like Joyce, Pamuk is ambivalent (at best) about his birth city.

Unlike Joyce, however, who had no trouble laying the blame for Dublin's backwardness on the Church and London politicians, Pamuk is unable to do the same. Pamuk simply observes; he does not ask why Istanbul was unable to move into the 21st century (or even the 20th century, for that matter). But his observations are superb.

Chapter Ten ("Melancholy") and Chapter Eleven ("Four Lonely Melancholic Writers") provide insight for Istanbul's plight but Pamuk does not explore the reasons for the melancholy. My gut feeling is that he knows the reason for the melancholy -- and if he were Joyce he would address it head-on. But Pamuk is afraid to go there. One keeps wanting to ask Pamuk if he has read "What Went Wrong" by Bernard Lewis, and if he has, his thoughts.

Having said that (it sounds a bit harsh), I was softened by his essay "First Love." That essay was worth the price of the book. This is one of the best essays I have ever read of one's first love. Like Istanbul, this tale explains much of Pamuk's melancholy mood. And, it explains why he is a Nobel Prize winner. Absolutely outstanding.

This is definitely a keeper, a nice little paperback that will fit nicely into your carry-on and into your beach basket.

---

NOTE: All online transactions are processed at Amazon.com's secure server, using the latest technology on internet's secure transactions.

| Outdoor fountains | Fountain accessories | Water gardens & ponds |
| Garden fountains | Outdoor fountains | Garden ponds | Water ponds |