SOURCE: Irwin, Robert. “Tales of the City.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 4814 (7 July 1995): 2.

In the following review, Irwin describes The Black Book as a “metaphysical parable” about cultural and individual identity.

According to Turkish folklore, the Simurgh is a bird with a name but no body. In the thirteenth-century Conference of the Birds by the Persian poet Farid al-Din al-Attar, the Simurgh, which nests on the equally legendary Mount Kaf, becomes the object of a mystical quest—a quest which ends in self-discovery for its participants. The Black Book, the second of Orhan Pamuk's books to be translated into English (it was originally reviewed in the TLS of October 12, 1990), takes a similar form, as Galip, a rather colourless lawyer, searches for his missing wife Ruya. (Ruya is Turkish for “dream”, though it also happens to be the name of a cinema in the insalubrious Beyoglu quarter of Istanbul; Pamuk's...