The following year Pamuk published his novel The Silent House, which in French translation won the 1991 Prix de la découverte européene. The novel was awarded both the Orhan Kemal and Milliyet literary prizes. The novel is the story of three generations of a wealthy Istanbul family living in Nisantasi, Pamuk's own home district.

His first novel Cevdet Bey and His Sons was published seven years later in 1982. At the age of 23 Pamuk decided to become a novelist, and giving up everything else retreated into his flat and began to write. He went on to graduate in journalism from Istanbul University, but never worked as a journalist. After graduating from the secular American Robert College in Istanbul, he studied architecture at Istanbul Technical University for three years, but abandoned the course when he gave up his ambition to become an architect and artist. As he writes in his autobiographical book Istanbul, from his childhood until the age of 22 he devoted himself largely to painting and dreamed of becoming an artist. Orhan Pamuk was born in Istanbul in 1952 and grew up in a large family similar to those which he describes in his novels Cevdet Bey and His Sons and The Black Book, in the wealthy westernised district of Nisantasi. Now, in Maureen Freely’s beautiful translation, they, too, may encounter all its riches.Ī Translation and Afterword by Maureen Freely For Turkish literary readers it is the cherished cult novel in which Orhan Pamuk found his original voice, but it has largely been neglected by English-language readers. With its cascade of beguiling stories about Istanbul, The Black Book is a brilliantly unconventional mystery, and a provocative meditation on identity. Galip pursues every conceivable clue, but the nature of the mystery keeps changing, and when he receives a death threat, he begins to fear the worst.

As Galip investigates, he finds himself assuming the enviable Celâl's identity, wearing his clothes, answering his phone calls, even writing his columns.

Could she have left him for her ex-husband or Celâl, a popular newspaper columnist? But Celâl, too, seems to have vanished. His wife, the detective novel–loving Ruya, has disappeared. “A glorious flight of dark, fantastic invention.” - The Washington Post From the Nobel Prize winner and acclaimed author of My Name is Red -a brilliantly unconventional mystery of a missing wife, and a provocative meditation on identity.

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