The CHR congratulates colleague Dr Pallavi Narayan on the publication of Pamuk’s Istanbul: The Self and the City.

In 2019, Dr Narayan was the sole participant from an Asian university at the CHCI-Mellon Global Humanities Institute on Challenges of Translation held at the Centro Interdisciplinario de Estudios en Filosofía, Artes y Humanidades (CIEFAH, Universidad de Chile). The conference was attended by Prof. Premesh Lalu, Dr. Maurits Van Bever Donker, and Assoc. Prof. Heidi Grunebaum of the CHR, and Prof. Nicky Rousseau (History, UWC). Challenges of Translation was hosted in partnership with four centres: CIEFAH, the CHR, UCI Commons (University of California), and Oxford Comparative Criticism and Translation based in The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (Oxford University). Dr Pallavi Narayan is Assistant Professor at O.P. Jindal Global University (JGU) in Sonipat, India. She is co-editor of Singapore at Home: Life across Lines.

Book Description

This book reconstructs Istanbul through the prism of Orhan Pamuk’s fiction. It navigates the multiple selves and layers of Istanbul to present how the city has shaped the writings of Pamuk and has, in turn, been shaped by it. Through everyday objects and architecture, it shows how Pamuk transforms the city into a living museum where different objects converse along with characters to present a rich tapestry across space and time.

Further, the monograph explores the formation of communal and literary identity within and around nation-building narratives informed by capitalism and modernization. The book also examines how Pamuk uses the postmodern city to move beyond its postmodern confines, and utilizes the theories and universes of Bakhtin, Benjamin, and Foucault to open up his fiction and radically challenge the idea of the novel.

The volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of literature, literary theory, museum studies, architecture, and cultural studies, and especially appeal to readers of Orhan Pamuk.

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