Istanbul: Memories and the City Istanbul: Memories and the City Istanbul: Memories and the City ("İstanbul: Hatıralar ve Şehir") is a largely autobiographical memoir by Orhan Pamuk that is deeply melancholic. It talks about the vast cultural change that has rocked Turkey – the unending battle between the modern and the receding past. It is also a eulogy to the lost joint family tradition. Most of all, it is a book about Bosphorus and Istanbul's history with the strait. It was translated into English by Maureen Freely in 2005. Pamuk wrote the book when he was on the verge of depression. In an interview he
Strait of Tartary (1832–54). On Russian maps, the short narrowest section of the strait (south of the mouth of the Amur) is called Nevelskoy Strait, after Admiral Gennady Nevelskoy, who explored the area in 1848; the body of water north of there, into which the Amur River flows, is the Amur Liman; and the name of "Strait of Tartary" is reserved for the largest section of the body of water, south of Nevelskoy Strait. The Tartar Strait was a puzzle to European explorers since, when approached from the south, it becomes increasingly shallow and looks like the head of a bay. In 1787